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 colour scheme as in the church, and here again Brunelleschi’s miraculous genius for proportion is to be found.  Here and there are foliations and other exquisite tracery by pupils of Desiderio da Settignano.  The refectory has a high-spirited fresco by that artist whose room in the Uffizi is so carefully avoided by discreet chaperons—­Giovanni di San Giovanni—­representing Christ eating at a table, his ministrants being a crowd of little roguish angels and cherubim, one of whom (on the right) is in despair at having broken a plate.  In the entrance lobby is a lavabo by Mino da Fiesole, with two little boys of the whitest and softest marble on it, which is worth study.