“Seeing Foreign Parts” 1638–1639His entry point, Nice, was part of the Duchy of Savoy, then embroiled in almost
constant power struggles for territory, and in alliance by turns with Spain and France.
From Nice he proceeded by boat to Genoa, then an independent republic ruled by
Councils, a Senate, and a Doge, but strongly Spanish in sympathy and fashion; its
bankers and brokers served as financial agents for Spain throughout Italy. From the
sea he could take in the splendid cityscape with its two hundred palaces, of which
the Villa Doria was the most spectacular. He had a few days there to observe some
of them more closely – their marble and painted exteriors and their spectacular
gardens and waterworks. Then he sailed on to the trading port of Livorno (Leghorn),
a free port where all nations and religions – Jews, Turks, Protestants – enjoyed
liberty and traded freely in goods and in galley slaves. From this entry to the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany he traveled by land some 14 miles to Pisa, stopping briefly and
no doubt visiting the most obvious landmarks: the ancient Duomo and Baptistery,
the famous university, the Leaning Tower. He perhaps wondered, as did John
Evelyn who covered much the same route six years later, “how it is supported from
immediately falling.”^8
He proceeded to Florence for two months or so, perhaps arriving in early July
and he was certainly still there in mid-September, 1638.^9 En route home he re-
turned to Florence for another such period (c. March 15–May 15, 1639). Though
the glory days of Florence were over, the ghosts of the past were everywhere: in the
monuments, the art, the literature, the institutions, and the historical memory of
Milton’s friends. Milton already knew most of the great names and soon learned of
others, understanding their contributions better in their Florentine context: Cosimo
and Lorenzo de Medici, Ficino, Alberti, Leonardo, Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli,
Guicciardini, Savonarola, Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo.
The reigning Medici Grand Duke, Ferdinand II, was a great patron of the arts and
of Galileo, though his inability to protect the scientist from the Inquisition testifies
to that family’s and Tuscany’s declining power, political and economic. According
to Edward Phillips Milton was much taken with the ambience of the city and its
noble structures – including, we may suppose, the Duomo with its Campanile and
Baptistery, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Pitti Palace and its gardens, Santa Croce, San
Lorenzo with the chapel containing the tombs of all the Medici, the bridges over
the Arno, and Fiesole, the ancient seat of the Etruscan people, with its breathtaking
prospect over the city (plate 5). We do not know what art Milton saw in Florence
or if he spent much time with it – he says nothing about that. But in addition to
what was in churches and other public places his friends could have given him
access to several great private collections.^10
The intellectual and social life of the academies was Milton’s chief delight in
Florence. Several academic friendships evidently began during his first visit to Flor-
ence and continued during the second. Though he also attended academies in
Rome, he thought of that institution as distinctively Florentine, and of his Florentine
academic friends as valued comrades in the service of the Muses: