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Updated: June 14, 2025
Varchi: Storia Fiorentina, lib. iii. caps. 20, 21, 22. The whole city of Florence is divided into four quarters, the first of which takes in the whole of that part which is now called Beyond the Arno, and the chief church of the district gives it the name of Santo Spirito.
To Jacopo of Volterra we owe piquant sketches of members of the Curia in the time of Sixtus IV. Vespasiano Fiorentino has often been referred to already, and as a historical authority a high place must be assigned to him; but his gift as a painter of character is not to be compared with that of Machiavelli, Niccolo Valori, Guicciardini, Varchi, Francesco Vettori, and others, by whom European historical literature has probably been as much influenced in this direction as by the ancients.
Few frescoes, again, were ever finished with more conscientious elaboration than those of the Sistine vault. See Varchi, at the end of the Storia Fiorentina, for episodes in the life of Pier Luigi Farnese, and Cellini for a popular estimate of the Cardinal, his father.
They wrote Italian, not only because they could not vie with the Ciceronian elegance of the philologists, but because, like Machiavelli, they could only record in a living tongue the living results of their own immediate observations and we may add in the case of Machiavelli, of his observation of the past and because, as in the case of Guicciardini, Varchi, and many others, what they most desired was, that their view of the course of events should have as wide and deep a practical effect as possible.
At all events, we have no difficulty in recognizing the city, where dying parents begged the government in their wills to fine their sons 1,000 florins if they declined to practice a regular profession. For the first half of the sixteenth century probably no State in the world possesses a document like the magnificent description of Florence by Varchi.
We learn from Varchi that Machiavelli was execrated in Florence for his Principe, the poor thinking it would teach the Medici to take away their honor, the rich regarding it as an attack upon their wealth, and both discerning in it a death-blow to freedom.
What was more annoying, he was accused, though falsely, of proposing to raze the palace of the Medici, where in his boyhood Lorenzo and Piero de' Medici had shown him honour as a guest at their own tables, and to name the space on which it stood the Place of Mules." For this reason he hid himself, as Condivi and Varchi assert, in the house of a trusty friend.
Such being the mood of Clement, it is not wonderful that Michelangelo should have trembled for his own life and liberty. As Varchi says, "He had been a member of the Nine, had fortified the hill and armed the bell-tower of S. Miniato.
Machiavelli seems to have only studied men in masses, or as political instruments, never as feeling and thinking personalities. See Varchi, loc. cit. See the criticisms of Ammirato and Romagnosi, quoted by Cantù, Letteratura Italiana, p. 187. I shall have to speak elsewhere of Machiavelli's comedies, occasional poems, novel of 'Belphegor, etc.
He proposed, then acting in this on the judicious advice of M. Benedetto Varchi, who has been in our times most excellent as poet, orator, and philosopher that at the upper and lower ends there should be placed the four Seasons of the year Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter and that each should be set up in that part where its particular season is most felt.
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