loisters, into which it is not easy to get,
have a gaunt John the Baptist in terra-cotta by Michelozzo.

On leaving the church, our natural destination is the Spedale, on the
left, but one should pause a moment in the doorway of the courtyard (if
the beggars who are always there do not make it too difficult) to look
down the Via de' Servi running straight away to the cathedral, which,
with its great red warm dome, closes the street. The statue in the
middle of the piazza is that of the Grand Duke Ferdinand by Giovanni da
Bologna, cast from metal taken from the Italians' ancient enemies the
Turks, while the fountains are by Tacca, Giovanni's pupil, who made
the bronze boar at the Mercato Nuovo. "The Synthetical Guide Book,"
from which I have already quoted, warns its readers not to overlook
"the puzzling bees" at the back of Ferdinand's statue. "Try to count
them," it adds. (I accepted the challenge and found one hundred and
one.) The bees have reference to Ferdinand's emblem--a swarm of these
insects, with the words "Majestate tantum". The statue, by the way,
is interesting for two other reasons than its subject. First, it is
that to which Browning's poem, "The Statue and the Bust," refers, and
which, according to the poet, was set here at Ferdinand's command to
gaze adoringly for ever at the della Robbia bust of the lady whom he
loved in vain. But the bust no longer is visible, if ever it was. John
of Douay (as Gian Bologna was also called)--

John of Douay shall effect my plan,
Set me on horseback here aloft,
Alive, as the crafty sculptor can,

In the very square I have crossed so oft:
That men may admire, when future suns
Shall touch the eyes to a purpose soft,

While the mouth and the brow stay brave in bronze--
Admire and say, "when he was alive
How he would take his pleasure once!"

The other point of interest is that when Maria de' Medici, Ferdinand's
niece, wished to erect a statue of Henri IV (her late husband) at the
Pont Neuf in Paris she asked to borrow Gian Bologna. But the sculptor
was too old to go and therefore only a bronze cast of this same horse
was offered. In the end Tacca completed both statues, and Henri IV
was set up in 1614 (after having fallen overboard on the voyage from
Leghorn to Havre). The present statue at the Pont Neuf is, however,
a modern substitute.

The facade of the Spedale degli Innocenti, or children's hospital, when
first seen by the visitor evokes perhaps th