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MORE than five hundred years ago the good people of Florence were much troubled because of the many poor homeless children in their city. There were but few foundling asylums in those days, and the poor little waifs and strays perished miserably or grew up to be beggars and thieves, excepting now and then when they were found in time and cared for by kind men and women. And so it was decided that there ought to be a home, where all could be taken in and saved from their misery. And no sooner was the good work thought of than every one wished to do something to help it. Leonardo Aretino, one of the greatest scholars of that day, spoke so earnestly and eloquently about it, that Giovanni de' Medici, the gonfaloniere of justice, or chief magistrate of the city, took the matter into his own hands, and commanded that an asylum should be built. One of the most powerful Florentine associations of workmen, known as the guild of silk, agreed to manage the work. A famous architect furnished the designs for it, and a great artist made it beautiful with his dec

orations. It is about these that I wish especially to tell you. And to do so, I must begin with a few words about the artist and his family.

There lived in Florence, in the fifteenth century, a sculptor whose name was Luca della Robbia. He was the son of a Florentine. He was taught, when a child, to read and write, and then, while he was still young, he was apprenticed to one of the goldsmiths whose work was famous throughout Europe. But, like many other young Florentines who have begun life as he did, he did not keep very long at this work, but became a sculptor. He cared so much for his work-as much as most boys of his age care for play-that he would keep at it all night long. Sometimes he would be very cold, for Florence, with high mountains all around it, is cold enough in winter; and even in summer-time a sculptor's studio, full of wet clay, as it must always be, is chilly and damp. But Luca bore it bravely, only stopping now and then to kindle a fire of shavings with which to warm his half-frozen feet. He lived for a while in

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THE TOWER OF THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN FLORENCE.

Rimini, but it was at this time that artists in Florence were working with their whole hearts and souls to make their new cathedral beautiful. There never were people who loved their city as the Florentines loved theirs, and Luca hurried back, that he too might have a share in the great decorations. And very lovely were his contributions, for he represented on a marble bas-relief for the organ-screen a choir of boys singing and playing on many musical instruments, and so life-like are they, that as you look at them you almost forget they are marble, and wait to hear their music.

But it is by another kind of work that Luca della Robbia is best known. For he longed, in his great ambition, to do what no one else had done; and there were Florentine sculptors as great as he, and even greater. And so he soon began to work in clay alone, which he glazed and colored, and in this way he made beautiful things which every one wanted as soon as they were seen. And orders from churches and convents,

from palaces and hospitals, poured in upon him; for no one knew the secret of this kind of work but himself. And, by and by, he had more commissions than he could attend to, and so he called to him his brothers- they all were sculptorsand he told them the secret, and they and their sons worked with him. And one of the nephews of the great Luca, known as Andrea, became almost as famous as his uncle. And so they went on working and sending their lovely reliefs to every part of Italy for many years. But the family died out with Luca's grandchildren, and as none of them had ever revealed their secret, no one after their death could work in majolica, or glazed clay, as they had done.

It was with this majolica that Andrea, the great Luca's nephew, decorated the asylum for the poor children the Spedale degl' Innocenti, as it was called. On the outer side of the building, toward the broad piazza by which it stands, is an arcade. On this he set up a row of medallions, each of which represents a baby in swaddling-clothes. The medallions are colored in blue, but the pretty little babies are white; and, though there are many of them, no two are alike. Some have curling hair tumbling over their foreheads; some have the short straight locks you so often see on real babies; and some have hardly any hair at all. Here is one who looks as if he were laughing outright; here another who is half pouting; and here still another, who is smiling in that gentle, quiet way in which babies so often smile in their sleep, when their mothers or nurses will tell you the angels are whispering to them. It was a pretty idea to put these little figures where every one passing can see them, and where they seem like suppliants for the children within, whose smiles and pouts too often change to tears and wailing, and whose needs are many.

If you go under the arcade and into the square around which the asylum is built, you will see over a door on your left another bas-relief by the same great master. It is a picture of the Annunciation, that hour when Mary, the mother of the Saviour, was told of the coming of the Holy Child; it is a subject which the old artists never grew tired of representing, either on canvas, or in marble or clay. But nowhere can you find one more beautiful than this of Andrea della Robbia ; and around the group, like a border, is a semicircle of cherubs' heads. Such demure little angels as some of them are, with hair neatly parted in the middle, and a resigned or attentive expression on their fresh baby faces! But others look so mischievous and roguish that you feel sure, if they were to come to life and descend from their high place, they would play many merry, fairy-like pranks.

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ONE OF THE DELLA ROBBIA MEDALLIONS ON THE FOUNDLING HOSPITAL IN FLORENCE.

The hospital grew richer as time went on, until to-day it supports more than seven thousand poor friendless children. But they do not all live in the old building, with its beautiful decorations. Boys, when they are old enough, are sent out into the country that they may work in the fields. Girls

But

are made servants or are taught a trade.
they all are under the care of the charity founded
by the good Florentines so many years ago; and
when they are in trouble they go back to the old
building designed by Brunelleschi and decorated
by Andrea della Robbia, with the beautiful little

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figures, called nowadays the Della Robbia Bambini white babies have never moved from their blue (or babies).

And so, year after year children are brought in, to grow up and go out into the great world, and to have their places taken by more poor little shelterless ones, of whom there are in Florence, as in every other large city, always too many. But, while foundlings have come and gone, the pretty

beds over the arcade, and they still smile and pout and laugh at the passer-by, whether the rain pours down upon them, or whether the sun shines over the wide piazza, even as they did in the days long ago before the last of the Della Robbias had died and their beautiful secret of making their special kind of glazed majolica had been lost forever.

ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.

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