me
practically an independent republic, much agitated by internal quarrels,
but capable of holding its own against neighboring cities. Its chief
buildings are thus an age or two later than those of Pisa; it did not
begin to produce splendid churches and palaces, in emulation of those of
Pisa and Siena, till about the close of the 13th century. To the same
period belongs the rise of its literature under Dante, and its painting
under Giotto. This epoch of rapid commercial, military, and artistic
development forms the main glory of early Florence.

The 14th century is chiefly interesting at Florence as the period of
Giottesque art, finding its final crown in Fra Angelico. With the
beginning of the 15th, we get the dawn of the Renaissance--the age when
art set out once more to recover the lost perfection of antique
workmanship. In literature, this movement took the form of humanism; in
architecture and sculpture, it exhibited itself in the persons of
Alberti, Ghiberti, Della Robbia, and Donatello; in painting, it showed
itself in Lippi, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, and Verrocchio....

We start, then, with the fact that up to nearly the close of the 13th
century (1278), Florence was a comparatively small and uninteresting
town, without any buildings of importance, save the relatively
insignificant Baptistery; without any great cathedral, like Pisa and
Siena; without any splendid artistic achievement of any kind. It
consisted at that period of a labyrinth of narrow streets, enclosing
huddled houses and tall towers of the nobles, like the two to be seen to
this day at Bologna. In general aspect, it could not greatly have
differed from Albenga or San Gimignano in our own time. But commerce was
active; wealth was increasing; and the population was seething with the
intellectual and artistic spirit of its Etruscan ancestry. During the
lifetime of Dante, the town began to transform itself and to prepare for
becoming the glorious Florence of the Renaissance artists. It then set
about building two immense and beautiful churches--Santa Croce and
Santa Maria Novella--while, shortly after, it grew to be ashamed of its
tiny San Giovanni (the existing Baptistery), and girded itself up to
raise a superb cathedral, which should cast into the shade both the one
long since finished at maritime Pisa and the one then still rising to
completion on the height of Siena.

Florence at that time extended no further than the area known as Old
Florence