ly sweep you into eternity; so narrow also
that the real dignity of the Bargello is never to be properly seen,
and one thinks of it rather for its inner court and staircase and
its strong tower than for its massive facades. Its history is soaked
in blood. It was built in the middle of the thirteenth century as the
residence of the chief magistrate of the city, the Capitano del popolo,
or Podesta, first appointed soon after the return of the Guelphs in
1251, and it so remained, with such natural Florentine vicissitudes
as destruction by mobs and fire, for four hundred years, when, in
1574, it was converted into a prison and place of execution and the
head-quarters of the police, and changed its name from the Palazzo
del Podesta to that by which it is now known, so called after the
Bargello, or chief of the police.

It is indeed fortunate that no rioters succeeded in obliterating
Giotto's fresco in the Bargello chapel, which he painted probably in
1300, when his friend Dante was a Prior of the city. Giotto introduced
the portrait of Dante which has drawn so many people to this little
room, together with portraits of Corso Donati, and Brunetto Latini,
Dante's tutor. Whitewash covered it for two centuries. Dante's head
has been restored.

It was in 1857 that the Bargello was again converted, this time to its
present gracious office of preserving the very flower of Renaissance
plastic art.

Passing through the entrance hall, which has a remarkable collection of
Medicean armour and weapons, and in which (I have read but not seen)
is an oubliette under one of the great pillars, the famous court is
gained and the famous staircase. Of this court what can I say? Its
quality is not to be communicated in words; and even the photographs of
it that are sold have to be made from pictures, which the assiduous
Signor Giuliani, among others, is always so faithfully painting,
stone for stone. One forgets all the horrors that once were enacted
here--the execution of honourable Florentine patriots whose only
offence was that in their service of this proud and beautiful city they
differed from those in power; one thinks only of the soft light on the
immemorial walls, the sturdy graceful columns, the carved escutcheons,
the resolute steps, the spaciousness and stern calm of it all.

In the colonnade are a number of statues, the most famous of which
is perhaps the "Dying Adonis" which Baedeker gives to Michelangelo
but the curator to Vinc