House and Garden 
STANDARD BEARER, I’ALAZZO MANCINI. 
CORTONA, XVI CENTURY 
of what is noteworthy in iron work art. 
I will, therefore, limit myself to dealing 
with some of the chief products of one 
region. The smith craft had an extraordi¬ 
nary extension in Piedmont, Venetia and 
Tuscany, but, while the two first named 
were largely subjected to foreign influences, 
Tuscany, which had arisen from the ruins of 
Etruria, and was hence rich in noble tradi¬ 
tions, was barely touched by the Northern 
and Oriental artistic currents. Hence, its 
productions are the most Italian as regards 
taste and art and thus offer a field of ob¬ 
servation full of interest and beauty. 
At the dawn of the fourteenth century, the 
Florentine Republic, where flourished the 
greatest artists of the age, as a special con¬ 
cession to its most influential citizens, as a 
privilege, a token of gratitude for services 
rendered, accorded permission to employ a 
new species of architectural decoration. This 
consisted of torch and light holders and 
other similar objects, which quickly passed 
from mere crude outlines and simple shapes 
to an exuberance of ornamentation, for they were not 
deemed unworthy of execution by the greatest craftsmen of 
the age. The torch holders were employed on great occa¬ 
sions and must certainly have co-operated in producing 
those splendid light effects of which the old chroniclers 
speak with such enthusiasm. In fact, let us imagine one of 
the narrow and dark streets of Florence on a soft summer 
evening of 1300. On one side we see the imposing front 
of a vast sombre palace, partly illumined by a long line of 
flaring torches held in place by large iron sockets, while 
below, over the cobblestone pavement, passes a motley 
crowd. Here paces a patrician clad in scarlet lucco , a curly- 
pated page, the red lily on a white field embroidered on his 
doublet, a fine dame in splendid raiment, a dainty, 
coquettish maiden, a warrior in shining armor and a 
monk garbed in severe ascetic tunic. It is a feast of line 
and color and light framed in a stern background. 
These torch holders, thus closely associated with the 
jovial character of the Florentines, assumed various 
forms according to the smiths that arose and vanished dur¬ 
ing several generations. At first, they were but simple iron 
cylinders held in an oblique position by a clamp fixed into 
the wall. Then, after ornamenting the external face of the 
cylinder with an X design, simple but most effective, the 
SCREEN IN S. CROCE, FLORENCE. I37I 
38 
