The patriarchs in the spandrels of the choir are by Ghirlandaio’s master, Alessio Baldovinetti, of whom I said something in the chapter on S. Maria Novella.  They once more testify to this painter’s charm and brilliance.  Almost more than that of any other does one regret the scarcity of his work.  It was fitting that he should have painted the choir, for his name-saint, S. Alessio, guards the facade of the church.

The column opposite the church came from the baths of Caracalla and was set up by Cosimo I, upon the attainment of his life-long ambition of a grand-dukeship and a crown.  The figure at the top is Justice.

S. Trinita is a good starting-point for the leisurely examination of the older and narrower streets, an occupation which so many visitors to Florence prefer to the study of picture galleries and churches.  And perhaps rightly.  In no city can they carry on their researches with such ease, for Florence is incurious about them.  Either the Florentines are too much engrossed in their own affairs or the peering foreigner has become too familiar an object to merit notice, but one may drift about even in the narrowest alleys beside the Arno, east and west, and attract few eyes.  And the city here is at its most romantic:  between the Piazza S. Trinita and the Via Por S. Maria, all about the Borgo SS.  Apostoli.

We have just been discussing Benedetto da Maiano the sculptor.  If we turn to the left on leaving S. Trinita, instead of losing ourselves in the little streets, we are in the Via Tornabuoni, where the best shops are and American is the prevailing language.  We shall soon come, on the right, to an example of Benedetto’s work as an architect, for the first draft of the famous Palazzo Strozzi, the four-square fortress-home which Filippo Strozzi began for himself in 1489, was his.  Benedetto continued the work until his death in 1507, when Cronaca, who built the great hall in the Palazzo Vecchio, took it over and added the famous cornice.  The iron lantern and other smithwork were by Lorenzo the Magnificent’s sardonic friend, “Il Caparro,” of the Sign of the Burning Books, of whom I wrote in the chapter on the Medici palace.

The first mistress of the Strozzi palace was Clarice Strozzi, nee Clarice de’ Medici, the daughter of Piero, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  She was born in 1493 and married Filippo Strozzi the younger in 1508, during the family’s second period of exile.  They then lived at Rome, but were allowed to return to Florence in 1510.  Clarice’s chief title to fame is her proud outburst when she turned Ippolito and Alessandro out of the Medici palace.  She died in 1528 and was buried in S. Maria Novella.  The unfortunate Filippo met his end nine years later in the Boboli fortezza, which his money had helped to build and in which he was imprisoned for his share in a conspiracy against Cosimo I. Cosimo confiscated the palace and all Strozzi’s other possessions, but later made some restitution.  To-day the family occupy the upper part of their famous imperishable home, and beneath there is an exhibition of pictures and antiquities for sale.  No private individual, whatever his wealth or ambition, will probably ever again succeed in building a house half so strong or noble as this.