In Florence there are some columns erected over the centuries as urban decoration and testimony of various vicissitudes. There are not many as for example in Rome, but each is linked to a particular event, real or legendary, of the city's history.
Also called the column of Dovizia, the column of Abundance is located
in Piazza della Repubblica. In Roman Florentia at this point, in the
forum, the cardo and the decumanus met, so here was the navel of the
city. Surely at this point there was a Roman column of which traces have
been lost.
In [1430 the current column was erected, with the
statue of Donatello's Dovizia at the top, made of sandstone. Worn out
now, it was replaced in 1721 by another similar one, by Giovan Battista
Foggini. In 19th-century photographs, before the demolition of the
Mercato Vecchio, the column appeared incorporated into one of the small
buildings used as workshops, which hid the base while allowing the
column with the statue to emerge beyond the roof. During the demolition
it was freed and for a certain period it returned to stand alone in the
square that was being carved out. However, following the collapse of an
arm of the statue, it was disassembled (1884): the column ended up in a
warehouse near Porta Romana, while the capital and the statue were
placed in the lapidary of the National Museum of San Marco.
In
1956 the Committee for the city's aesthetics, thanks to the funds of the
Tourism Company, put the column back in its centuries-old place, having
a copy of the statue made by Mario Moschi on the occasion, while the
original by Foggini was placed in the building of the historic
headquarters of the Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze in via Bufalini.
It is located in Piazza San Giovanni, almost in front of the north
door of the baptistery of San Giovanni. It is composed of a cipollino
marble shaft surmounted by an iron tree and a cross. It was erected in
the place where a miracle linked to the cult of Saint Zenobius allegedly
took place: when the saint's relics passed, which were transferred from
the old cathedral of San Lorenzo to the new one of Santa Reparata on 26
January 429, a dry elm, in full winter, just by accidental contact with
the sarcophagus, it would be miraculously revived by sprouting tender
leaves. According to tradition, a crucifix was carved from the original
tree and is now kept in the church of San Giovannino dei Cavalieri in
via San Gallo.
We do not know the year it was built. However it
was landed by the flood of 1333 and re-erected in 1334; in 1338 it was
crowned with the cross; in 1375 an inscription was added on the stem
which recalls the legend of Saint Zenobius; in 1501 the cross fell to
the ground during the preparations for the feast of Saint John.
A
short distance from the column of San Zanobi there are two other columns
leaning incongruously against the baptistery itself. In reality, the two
porphyry columns, offered by Pisa to Florence as thanks for the help
offered in 1117 against the Lucchesi, and also known as "Saracen
columns", were positioned free in the square for a long time, but
following a ruinous fallen, in which they were damaged, they were placed
on the east facade of the baptistery, on the sides of Ghiberti's
Paradise door.
This granite column from the island of Elba with a Corinthian capital
in front of the church of Santa Felicita is dedicated to the exploits of
Saint Peter the Martyr (fra' Pietro da Verona), against the Cathar
heretics, in the place where one of the most hard between the two
factions, decisive for the Catholics (1244).
The Rossi d'Oltrarno
family later decided to finance the construction of a memorial, which
was the current granite column. In 1484 a glazed terracotta statue in
Della Robbia style was placed on the capital, depicting the Dominican
friar Pietro da Verona, an inquisitor sent to Florence by the pope to
defeat heresy, who with his oratory ardor had inflamed the minds of many
Florentines who organized in a sort of militia called the "Society of
Santa Maria", leading them to forever eradicate the proselytism of the
Cathars. The statue was shattered in 1723 due to a fall caused by
atmospheric agents and was replaced by a marble work by Antonio
Mormorai, which was removed in the mid-nineteenth century.
The
column was destroyed in August 1944 by the retreating Germans, who had
mined the approaches to the Ponte Vecchio, but was later patiently
rebuilt and relocated to its original site.
The granite column of the island of Elba, probably made in Pisa, was
erected in 1338 over an ancient well in memory of the victory of the
militias of the Dominican inquisitor Pietro da Verona (later Saint Peter
Martyr), the so-called knights of Santa Maria , against the Cathar
heretics, in 1244. The event, however, is not documented by sources
close to the times of the events and is indicated by many as a possible
invention of the hagiographers.
The monument consists of an
inverted capital as a base, on which stands the column surmounted by
another marble capital and an aedicule with a small medieval canopy,
which contains a marble cross with a double image of Christ, with a
another two-faced effigy of Saint Peter Martyr. At the corners are the
symbols of the four evangelists (tetramorph). A Latin inscription at the
base indicates the date of placement and the reason for the undertaking.
The inscription says that this cross was placed here in 1338, to replace
another, which Saint Zenobius and Saint Ambrose had placed there.
The Column of Justice is located in Piazza Santa Trinita and is the
tallest of the city columns.
The stem
It was donated by Pope
Pius IV to Cosimo I and comes from the natatio (the monumental swimming
pool) from the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, carved in a precious oriental
granite: it is the only intact column that has come down to us from this
monument. It is a large monolithic column 11.17 meters high and weighing
about 50 tons, which arrived in Florence after a long journey.
The transport from Rome to the sea was done in the summer of 1562, with
the men and means of the shipyard of San Pietro, and presented numerous
difficulties especially in the journey which lasted over two months,
from the thermal baths to the port on the Tiber, done at a speed of 120
meters per day. The transport was supervised by Giorgio Vasari who
verified the possibility of loading it on the boat sent by Cosimo I and
probably built for the occasion. After the operations, probably very
complex, to load the column, in the winter the boat moved towards Ostia
and Civitavecchia, not without many difficulties and then put to sea,
towed by a galley which also had to sustain a fight with two Turkish
boats, arriving in Livorno in March 1563. The journey on the Arno, in
the second half of April, must have taken place with the help of a
smaller boat probably fitted out for the occasion and it had to be
interrupted at Ponte a Signa "for not being able go further forward
Fiorenza col scafa” due to the reduced flow of the river. After lengthy
preparations under the supervision of Bartolomeo Ammannati, towards the
end of July the column harnessed in a wooden frame called "nice" is
towed along the Via Pisana towards Florence, with specially made ropes,
by horses and oxen with the work of about twenty workers. The column
arrives in Piazza Santa Trinita on 26 September 1563, after more than a
year's journey.
After being remodeled by Ammannati, it was
erected in its final location in 1565. Via de' Tornabuoni, Via delle
Terme and Borgo Santi Apostoli visually converge on the column and it
dominates the space of the square with a completely new sense of
gigantism for Florence.
Cosimo's intention was to celebrate the victory over Siena in the
battle of Marciano (August 2, 1554). In fact, the point where it is
located was the one where the duke was at the moment he received the
news of the victory won by his troops over the rebel Pietro Strozzi and
his Sienese allies. When Cosimo was later named Grand Duke, the
dedication inscription was added to the base as Column of Justice and
the top was crowned in 1581 by the statue of Justice, in ancient red
porphyry, by Francesco del Tadda and his son Romolo. Francesco del Tadda
had become a specialist in working the difficult and very hard material,
so much so that Vasari and Cellini attribute to him the rediscovery of
the ancient working techniques used in the classical period. The statue
is about 6 arms high and made by assembling together with metal pins six
pieces of porphyry probably also from Rome. It took the Ferruccis eleven
years to sculpt Justice in the very hard material, during which time the
large statue remained in a loggia of the Bardi family in the church of
Santa Maria Sopr'Arno. The model of the statue was by Ammannati, as the
Ferruccis were stonemasons without artistic education (without "drawing"
as it was then called). The bronze drapery of the cloak that covers
Justice's shoulders was not originally foreseen. It was applied by the
artist only after the statue was completed to remedy a defect in the
shoulders, which appeared very small compared to the body, also due to
the particular perspective point of view.
The magpie
In the
years immediately following the installation of the statue of Justice, a
curious episode took place: some boys who used to play on the Ponte
Vecchio were accused of having stolen some precious stones from some
jewelers' stalls. The boys pleaded innocent; however they were warned
against setting foot on the bridge again. Despite this measure, the
thefts continued.
A few years later the truth would come to the
surface: in a periodic cleaning operation of the statue of Justice, a
magpie's nest was discovered inside one of the saucers of the scale,
with all the stolen goods inside.
The second celebratory column commissioned by Cosimo I was to
symbolize the victory in the battle of Marciano. It was placed in Piazza
San Felice, at the crossroads between Via Maggio and Via Romana, near
Palazzo Pitti. It is a monolith in Medici breccia, quarried in
Seravezza, together with another intended for Piazza San Marco (see
below). Given the unusual size (16 arms = 9.4 meters), Bartolomeo
Ammannati took care of supervising the operations in the quarry and the
transport.
In 1572 an attempt was made to raise the column which
broke in half; it was therefore necessary to pivot the two sections. The
column remained incomplete, without a capital and without a canonical
base.
Cosimo's project also envisaged the placement of a statue
representing Peace at its top, (in an overall project which envisaged
the column of Justice, that of "Peace" and that of "Religion" in Piazza
San Marco), but death of the grand duke arrived before the work had been
commissioned.
The column remained in its location until 1838,
when Grand Duke Leopold II had it removed to widen the passage. A plaque
on a building in the square commemorates the removal of the "imperfect"
monument. In 1992 it was placed again in its original location.
Column of San Marco
This was the third of the celebratory columns
that Cosimo I intended to raise in the city - after those in Piazza
Santa Trinita and Piazza San Felice - in Piazza San Marco and intended
to represent Peace. Arrived in Florence in 1572 from Seravezza, the
large column, 22 arms high (about 12.90 meters) was placed lying in the
square, supported by some beam sections. When Grand Duke Cosimo died,
Francesco I ordered it to be placed on a cube made by Pietro Tacca in
the assigned place, crowned by the statue of Joanna of Austria, wife of
the young Grand Duke. The statue, begun by Giambologna, was completed
after his death by his pupil Pietro Tacca. When everything was ready to
raise, the lying column broke in the middle. The project was then
abandoned and the column was buried in the square itself. The statue,
transformed into a representation of Wealth, was placed to crown the
perspective avenue of the Boboli amphitheater; the base was destroyed in
1661, to make room for the equipment for the celebrations for the
arrival in the city of Margherita Luisa d'Orléans, wife of Cosimo III.
In 1694 the column was excavated by a committee of citizens and a
new base was prepared to be able to raise it after having reassembled
it, surmounted by a statue of San Antonino [12]. The undertaking was not
followed up as the subscription of funds was unsuccessful. The base was
dismantled again in 1738 and at least one of the fragments of the column
was buried in the center of the same square and only later rediscovered
and placed in storage in the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts in
Florence. The Academy has launched a competition and a subscription to
complete and raise it, which however does not seem to have had a result.
Other columns
The column on top of the English Cemetery dates
back to 1858, when it was donated by Frederick William IV of Prussia.
A stone column is set into the external corner of Andrea del Sarto's
house between via Giusti and via Gino Capponi.
Two ancient columns
are found in the Loggia dei Tessitori in via San Gallo: they were part
of the arch before they were replaced with new ones due to deterioration
due to atmospheric agents.
The white marble column with cast iron
base and Doric capital, raised in the first decades of the 19th century
(perhaps based on a design by Giuseppe Manetti) at the Cascine on the
promenade along the river, in correspondence with the road that divides
the Cornacchie meadow from the of the Quercione.
There were two
wooden columns in Piazza Santa Maria Novella, provisionally erected in
1563 as destinations for the traditional horse race, and replaced in
1608 by the two current obelisks.