as Mino to his.

Settignano is a mere village, with villas all about it, and
the thing to remember there is not only that Desiderio was born
there but that Michelangelo's foster-mother was the wife of a
local stone-cutter--stone-cutting at that time being the staple
industry. On the way back to Florence in the tram, one passes on the
right a gateway surmounted by statues of the poets, the Villa Poggio
Gherardo, of which I have spoken earlier in the chapter. There is no
villa with a nobler mien than this.

That is one walk from Fiesole. Another is even more a sculptors' way:
for it would include Maiano too, where Benedetto was born. The road
is by way of the tram lines to that acute angle just below Fiesole
when they turn back to S. Domenico, and so straight on down the hill.

But if one is returning to Florence direct after leaving Fiesole it
is well to walk down the precipitous paths to S. Domenico, and before
again taking the tram visit the Badia overlooking the valley of the
Mugnone. This is done by turning to the right just opposite the church
of S. Domenico, which has little interest structurally but is famous
as being the chapel of the monastery where Fra Angelico was once a
monk. The Badia (Abbey) di Fiesole, as it now is, was built on the
site of an older monastery, by Cosimo Pater. Here Marsilio Ficino's
Platonic Academy used to meet, in the loggia and in the little temple
which one gains from the cloisters, and here Pico della Mirandola
composed his curious gloss on Genesis.

The dilapidated marble facade of the church and its rugged stone-work
are exceedingly ancient--dating in fact from the eleventh century;
the new building is by Brunelleschi and to my mind is one of his
most beautiful works, its lovely proportions and cool, unfretted
white spaces communicating even more pleasure than the Pazzi chapel
itself. The decoration has been kept simple and severe, and the colour
is just the grey pietra serena of Fiesole, of which the lovely arches
are made, all most exquisitely chiselled, and the pure white of the
walls and ceilings. This church was a favourite with the Medici, and
the youthful Giovanni, the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, received
his cardinal's hat here in 1492, at the age of sixteen. He afterwards
became Pope Leo X. How many of the boys, now in the school--for the
monastery has become a Jesuit school--will, one wonders, rise to
similar eminence.

In the beautiful cloisters we have the same