The Story of Florence Part 11

The Baptism of Christ over the portal is an unattractive work by Andrea Sansovino (circa 1505), finished by Vincenzo Danti. The Angel is a seventeenth century addition. More interesting far, are the scorched porphyry columns on either side of the gate; these were part of the booty carried off by the Pisan galleys from Majorca in 1117, and presented to the Florentines in grat.i.tude for their having guarded Pisa during the absence of the troops. Villani says that the Pisans offered their allies the choice between these porphyry columns and some metal gates, and that, on their choosing the columns, they sent them to Florence covered with scarlet, but that some said that they scorched them first for envy. It was between these columns that Cavalcanti was lingering and musing when the gay cavalcade of Betto Brunelleschi and his friends, in Boccaccio's novel, swooped down upon him through the Piazza di Santa Reparata: "Thou, Guido, wilt none of our fellows.h.i.+p; but lo now! when thou shalt have found that there is no G.o.d, what wilt thou have done?"

From the gate which might have stood at the doors of Paradise, or at least have guarded that sacred threshold by which Virgil and Dante entered Purgatory, we cross to the tower which might fittingly have sounded tierce and nones to the valley of the Princes. This "Shepherd's Tower," according to Ruskin, is "the model and mirror of perfect architecture." The characteristics of Power and Beauty, he writes in the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, "occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another. But all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as I know, only in one building in the world, the Campanile of Giotto."

Like Ghiberti's bronze gates, this exquisitely lovely tower of marble has beauty beyond words: "That bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea-sh.e.l.l." It was commenced by Giotto himself in 1334, when the first stone was solemnly laid. When Giotto died in 1336, the work had probably not risen above the stage of the lower series of reliefs.

Andrea Pisano was chosen to succeed him, and he carried it on from 1337 to 1342, finis.h.i.+ng the first story and bringing it up to the first of the three stories of windows; it will be observed that Andrea, who was primarily a sculptor, unlike Giotto, made provision for the presence of large monumental statues as well as reliefs in his decorative scheme. Through some misunderstanding, Andrea was then deprived of the work, which was intrusted to Francesco Talenti.

Francesco Talenti carried it on until 1387, making a general modification in the architecture and decoration; the three most beautiful windows, increasing in size as we ascend, with their beautiful Gothic tracery, are his work. According to Giotto's original plan, the whole was to have been crowned with a pyramidical steeple or spire; Vasari says that it was abandoned "because it was a German thing, and of antiquated fas.h.i.+on."

All around the base of the tower runs a wonderful series of bas-reliefs on a very small scale, setting forth the whole history of human skill under divine guidance, from the creation of man to the reign of art, science, and letters, in twenty-seven exquisitely "inlaid jewels of Giotto's." At each corner of the tower are three s.h.i.+elds, the red Cross of the People between the red lilies of the Commune. "This smallness of scale," says Ruskin of these reliefs "enabled the master workmen of the tower to execute them with their own hands; and for the rest, in the very finest architecture, the decoration of the most precious kind is usually thought of as a jewel, and set with s.p.a.ce round it--as the jewels of a crown, or the clasp of a girdle." These twenty-seven subjects, with the possible exception of the last five on the northern side, were designed by Giotto himself; and are, together with the first bronze door, the greatest Florentine work in sculpture of the first half of the fourteenth century. The execution is, in the main, Andrea Pisano's; but there is a constant tradition that some of the reliefs are from Giotto's own hand. Antonio Pucci, in the eighty-fifth canto of his _Centiloquio_, distinctly states that Giotto carved the earlier ones, _i primi intagli fe con bello stile_, and Pucci was almost Giotto's contemporary. "Pastoral life," "Jubal," "Tubal Cain," "Sculpture," "Painting," are the special subjects which it is most plausible, or perhaps most attractive, to ascribe to him.

On the western side we have the creation of Man, the creation of Woman; and then, thirdly, Adam and Eve toiling, or you may call it the dignity of labour, if you will--Giotto's rendering of the thought which John Ball was to give deadly meaning to, or ever the fourteenth century closed--

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

Then come pastoral life, Jabal with his tent, his flock and dog; Jubal, the maker of stringed and wind instruments; Tubal Cain, the first worker in metal; the first vintage, represented by the story of Noah. On the southern side comes first Astronomy, represented by either Zoroaster or Ptolemy. Then follow Building, Pottery, Riding, Weaving, and (according to Ruskin) the Giving of Law. Lastly Daedalus, symbolising, according to Ruskin, "the conquest of the element of air"; or, more probably, here as in Dante (_Paradiso_ viii.), the typical mechanician. Next, on the eastern side, comes Rowing, symbolising, according to Ruskin, "the conquest of the sea"--very possibly intended for Jason and the Argo, a type adopted in several places by Dante. The next relief, "the conquest of the earth,"

probably represents the slaying of Antaeus by Hercules, and symbolises the "beneficent strength of civilisation, crus.h.i.+ng the savageness of inhumanity." Giotto uses his mythology much as Dante does--as something only a little less sacred, and of barely less authority than theology--and the conquest of Antaeus by Hercules was a solemn subject with Dante too; besides a reference in the _Inferno_, he mentions it twice in the _De Monarchia_ as a special revelation of G.o.d's judgment by way of ordeal, and touches upon it again in the _Convivio, secondo le testimonianze delle scritture_. Here Hercules immediately follows the "conquest of the sea," as having, by his columns, set sacred limits to warn men that they must pa.s.s no further (_Inferno_ xxvi.).

Brutality being thus overthrown, we are shown agriculture and trade,--represented by a splendid team of ploughing bulls and a horse-chariot, respectively. Then, over the door of the tower, the Lamb with the symbol of Resurrection, perhaps, as Ruskin thinks, to "express the law of Sacrifice and door of ascent to Heaven"; or, perhaps, merely as being the emblem of the great Guild of wool merchants, the Arte della Lana, who had charge of the cathedral works.

Then follow the representations of the arts, commencing with the relief at the corner: Geometry, regarded as the foundation of the others to follow, as being _senza macula d'errore e certissima_.

Turning the corner, the first and second, on the northern side, represent Sculpture and Painting, and were possibly carved by Giotto himself. The remaining five are all later, and from the hand of Luca della Robbia, who perhaps worked from designs left by Giotto--Grammar, which may be taken to represent Literature in general, Arithmetic, the science of numbers (in its great mediaeval sense), Dialectics; closing with Music, in some respects the most beautiful of the series, symbolised in Orpheus charming beasts and birds by his strains, and Harmony. "Harmony of song," writes Ruskin, "in the full power of it, meaning perfect education in all art of the Muses and of civilised life; the mystery of its concord is taken for the symbol of that of a perfect state; one day, doubtless, of the perfect world."

Above this fundamental series of bas-reliefs, there runs a second series of four groups of seven. They were probably executed by pupils of Andrea Pisano, and are altogether inferior to those below--the seven Sacraments on the northern side being the best. Above are a series of heroic statues in marble. Of these the oldest are those less easily visible, on the north opposite the Duomo, representing David and Solomon, with two Sibyls; M. Reymond ascribes them to Andrea Pisano. Those opposite the Misericordia are also of the fourteenth century. On the east are Habakkuk and Abraham, by Donatello (the latter in part by a pupil), between two Patriarchs probably by Niccol d'Arezzo, the chief sculptor of the Florentine school at the end of the Trecento. Three of the four statues opposite the Baptistery are by Donatello; figures of marvellous strength and vigour. It is quite uncertain whom they are intended to represent (the "Solomon" and "David," below the two in the centre, refer to the older statues which once stood here), but the two younger are said to be the Baptist and Jeremiah. The old bald-headed prophet, irreverently called the _Zuccone_ or "Bald-head," is one of Donatello's masterpieces, and is said to have been the sculptor's own favourite creation. Vasari tells us that, while working upon it, Donatello used to bid it talk to him, and, when he wanted to be particularly believed, he used to swear by it: "By the faith that I bear to my Zuccone."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BIGALLO]

At the end of the Via Calzaioli, opposite the Baptistery, is that little Gothic gem, the Loggia called the _Bigallo_, erected between 1352 and 1358, for the "Captains of Our Lady of Mercy," while Orcagna was rearing his more gorgeous tabernacle for the "Captains of Our Lady of Or San Michele." Its architect is unknown; his manner resembles Orcagna's, to whom the work has been erroneously ascribed. The Madonna is by Alberto Arnoldi (1361). The Bigallo was intended for the public functions of charity of the foundling hospital, which was founded under the auspices of the Confraternity of the Misericordia, whose oratory is on the other side of the way. These Brothers of Mercy, in their mysterious black robes hiding their faces, are familiar enough even to the most casual visitor to Florence; and their work of succour to the sick and injured has gone on uninterruptedly throughout the whole of Florentine history.

In the last decade of the thirteenth century, when the People and Commune of Florence were in an unusually peaceful state, after the tumults caused by the reforms and expulsion of Giano della Bella had subsided, the new Cathedral was commenced on the site of the older church of Santa Reparata. The first stones and foundations were blessed with great solemnity in 1296; and, in this golden age of the democracy, the work proceeded apace, until in a doc.u.ment of April 1299, concerning the exemption of Arnolfo di Cambio from all taxation, it is stated that "by reason of his industry, experience and genius, the Commune and People of Florence from the magnificent and visible beginning of the said work of the said church, commenced by the same Master Arnolphus, hope to have a more beautiful and more honourable temple than any other which there is in the regions of Tuscany."

But although the original design and beginning were undoubtedly Arnolfo's, the troublous times that fell upon Florence appear to have interrupted the work; and it was almost abandoned for lack of funds until 1334, when Giotto was appointed capo-maestro of the Commune and of the work of Santa Reparata, as it was still called. The Cathedral was now in charge of the Arte della Lana, as the Baptistery was in that of the Arte di Calimala. It is not precisely known what Giotto did with it; but the work languished again after his death, until Francesco Talenti was appointed capo-maestro, and, in July 1357, the foundations were laid of the present church of Santa Maria del Fiore, on a larger and more magnificent scale. Arnolfo's work appears to have been partly destroyed, partly enlarged and extended. Other capo-maestri carried on what Francesco Talenti had commenced, until, in 1378, just at the end of mediaeval Florence, the fourth and last great vault was closed, and the main work finished.

The completion of the Cathedral belongs to that intermediate epoch which saw the decline of the great democracy and the dawn of the Renaissance, and ran from 1378 to 1421, in which latter year the third tribune was finished. Filippo Brunelleschi's dome or cupola, raised upon a frieze or drum high above the three great semi-domes, with a large window in each of the eight sides, was commenced in 1420 and finished in 1434, the year which witnessed the establishment of the Medicean regime in Florence. Vasari waxes most enthusiastic over this work. "Heaven willed," he writes, "after the earth had been for so many years without an excellent soul or a divine spirit, that Filippo should leave to the world from himself the greatest, the most lofty and the most beauteous construction of all others made in the time of the moderns and even in that of the ancients." And Michelangelo imitated it in St Peter's at Rome, turning back, as he rode away from Florence, to gaze upon Filippo's work, and declaring that he could not do anything more beautiful. Some modern writers have pa.s.sed a very different judgment. Fergusson says:--"The plain, heavy, simple outlined dome of Brunelleschi acts like an extinguisher, crus.h.i.+ng all the lower part of the composition, and both internally and externally destroying all harmony between the parts." Brunelleschi also designed the Lantern, which was commenced shortly before his death (1446) and finished in 1461. The palla or ball, which crowns the whole, was added by Andrea Verrocchio. In the fresco in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, you shall see the Catholic Church symbolised by the earlier church of Santa Reparata; and, as the fresco was executed before the middle of the fourteenth century, it apparently represents the designs of Arnolfo and Giotto. Vasari, indeed, states that it was taken from Arnolfo's model in wood. "From this painting," he says, "it is obvious that Arnolfo had proposed to raise the dome immediately over the piers and above the first cornice, at that point namely where Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, desiring to render the building less heavy, interposed the whole s.p.a.ce wherein we now see the windows, before adding the dome."[41]

[41] "There is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via de'

Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts" (_Seven Lamps_).

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTA DELLA MANDORLA, DUOMO]

The Duomo has had three facades. Of the first facade, the facade of Arnolfo's church before 1357, only two statues remain which probably formed part of it; one of Boniface VIII. within the Cathedral, of which more presently, and a statue of a Bishop in the sacristy. The second facade, commenced in 1357, and still in progress in 1420, was left unfinished, and barbarously destroyed towards the end of the sixteenth century. A fres...o...b.. Poccetti in the first cloister of San Marco, the fifth to the right of the entrance, representing the entrance of St. Antoninus into Florence to take possession of his see, shows this second facade. Some of the statues that once decorated it still exist. The Boniface reappeared upon it from the first facade, between St. Peter and St. Paul; over the princ.i.p.al gate was Our Lady of the Flower herself, presenting her Child to give His blessing to the Florentines--and this is still preserved in the Opera del Duomo--by an unknown artist of the latter half of the fourteenth century; she was formerly attended by Zen.o.bius and Reparata, while Angels held a canopy over her--these are lost. Four Doctors of the Church, now mutilated and transformed into poets, are still to be seen on the way to Poggio Imperiale--by Niccol d'Arezzo and Piero di Giovanni Tedesco (1396); some Apostles, probably by the latter, and very fine works, are in the court of the Riccardi Palace. The last statues made for the facade, the four Evangelists, of the first fifteen years of the Quattrocento, are now within the present church, in the chapels of the Tribune of St. Zen.o.bius. There is a curious tradition that Donatello placed Farinata degli Uberti on the facade; and few men would have deserved the honour better. After the sixteenth century the facade remained a desolate waste down to our own times.

The present facade, gorgeous but admirable in its way, was designed by De Fabris, and finished between 1875 and 1887; the first stone was laid by Victor Emmanuel in 1860. Thus has the United Italy of to-day completed the work of the great Republic of the Middle Ages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STATUE OF BONIFACE VIII.]

The four side gates of the Duomo are among the chief artistic monuments of Florentine sculpture in the epoch that intervened between the setting of Andrea Pisano and Orcagna, and the rising of Donatello and Ghiberti. Nearer the facade, south and north, the two plainer and earlier portals are always closed; the two more ornate and later, the gate of the canons on the south and the gate of the Mandorla on the north, are the ordinary entrances into the aisles of the cathedral.

Earliest of the four is the minor southern portal near the Campanile, over which the pigeons cl.u.s.ter and coo. Our Lady of the Pigeons, in the tympanum, is an excellent work of the school of Nino Pisano (Andrea's son), rather later than the middle of the Trecento. The northern minor portal is similar in style, with sculpture subordinated to polychromatic decoration, but with beautiful twisted columns, of which the two outermost rest upon grand mediaeval lions, who are helped to bear them by delicious little winged _putti_. Third in order of construction comes the chief southern portal, the Porta dei Canonici, belonging to the last decade of the fourteenth century. The pilasters are richly decorated with sculptured foliage and figures of animals in the intervals between the leaves. In the tympanum above, the Madonna and Child with two adoring Angels--statues of great grace and beauty--are by Lorenzo di Giovanni d'Ambrogio, 1402. Above are Angels bearing a tondo of the Pieta.

The Porta della Mandorla is one of the most perfect examples of Florentine decorative sculpture that exists. M. Reymond calls it "le produit le plus pur du genie florentin dans toute l'independance de sa pensee." It was commenced by Giovanni di Ambrogio, the chief master of the canons' gate; and finished by Niccol da Arezzo, in the early years of the fifteenth century. The decorations of its pilasters, with nude figures amidst the conventional foliage between the angels with their wings and scrolls, are already almost in the spirit of the Renaissance. The mosaic over the door, representing the Annunciation, was executed by Domenico Ghirlandaio in 1490. "Amongst modern masters of mosaic," says Vasari, "nothing has yet been seen better than this.

Domenico was wont to say that painting is mere design, and that the true painting for eternity is mosaic." The two small statues of Prophets are the earliest works of Donatello, 1405-1406. Above is the famous relief which crowns the whole, and from which the door takes its name--the glorified Madonna of the Mandorla. Formerly ascribed to Jacopo della Quercia, it is now recognised as the work of Nanni di Banco, whose father Antonio collaborated with Niccol da Arezzo on the door. It represents the Madonna borne up in the Mandorla surrounded by Angels, three of whom above are hymning her triumph. With a singularly sweet yet majestic maternal gesture, she consigns her girdle to the kneeling Thomas on the left; on the right among the rocks, a bear is either shaking or climbing a tree. This work, executed slightly before 1420, is the best example of the n.o.ble manner of the fourteenth century united to the technical mastery of the fifteenth. Though matured late, it is the most perfect fruit of the school of Orcagna.

Nanni died before it was quite completed. The precise symbolism of the bear is not easy to determine; it occurs also in Andrea Pisano's relief of Adam and Eve labouring, on the Campanile. According to St.

Buonaventura, the bear is an emblem of l.u.s.t; according to the Bestiaries, of Violence. The probability is that here it merely represents the evil one, symbolising the Fall in the Adam and Eve relief, and now implying that Mary healed the wound that Eve had dealt the human race--_la piaga che Maria richiuse ed unse_.

The interior is somewhat bare, and the aisles and vaults are so proportioned and constructed as to destroy much of the effect of the vast size both of the whole and of the parts. The nave and aisles lead to a great octagonal s.p.a.ce beneath the dome, where the choir is placed, extending into three polygonal apses, those to right and left representing the transepts.

Over the central door is a fine but restored mosaic of the Coronation of Madonna, by Giotto's friend and contemporary, Gaddo Gaddi, which is highly praised by Vasari. On either side stand two great equestrian portraits in fresco of condottieri, who served the Republic in critical times; by Andrea del Castagno is Niccol da Tolentino, who fought in the Florentine pay with average success and more than average fidelity, and died in 1435, a prisoner in the hands of Filippo Maria Visconti; by Paolo Uccello is Giovanni Aguto, or John Hawkwood, a greater captain, but of more dubious character, who died in 1394.

Let it stand to Hawkwood's credit that St Catherine of Siena once wrote to him, _O carissimo e dolcissimo fratello in Cristo Gesu_. By the side of the entrance is the famous statue, mutilated but extraordinarily impressive, of Boniface VIII., ascribed by Vasari to Andrea Pisano, but which is certainly earlier, and may possibly, according to M. Reymond, be a.s.signed to Arnolfo di Cambio himself. It represents the terrible Pontiff in the flower of his age; hardly a portrait, but an idealised rendering of a Papal politician, a _papa re_ of the Middle Ages. Even so might he have looked when he received Dante and his fellow-amba.s.sadors alone, and addressed to them the words recorded by Dino Compagni: "Why are ye so obstinate? Humble yourselves before me. I tell you in very truth that I have no other intention, save for your peace. Let two of you go back, and they shall have my benediction if they bring it about that my will be obeyed."

As though in contrast with this worldly Pope, on the first pillars in the aisles are pictures of two ideal pastors; on the left, St Zen.o.bius enthroned with Eugenius and Crescentius, by an unknown painter of the school of Orcagna; on the right, a similar but comparatively modern picture of St Antoninus giving his blessing. In the middle of the nave, is the original resting-place of the body of Zen.o.bius; here the picturesque blessing of the roses takes place on his feast-day. The right and left aisles contain some striking statues and interesting monuments. First on the right is a statue of a Prophet (sometimes called Joshua), an early Donatello, said to be the portrait of Giannozzo Manetti, between the monuments of Brunelleschi and Giotto; the bust of the latter is by Benedetto da Maiano, and the inscription by Poliziano. Opposite these, in the left aisle, is a most life-like and realistic statue of a Prophet by Donatello, said to be the portrait of Poggio Bracciolini, between modern medallions of De Fabris and Arnolfo. Further on, on the right, are Hezekiah by Nanni di Banco, and a fine portrait bust of Marsilio Ficino by Andrea Ferrucci (1520)--the mystic dreamer caught in a rare moment of inspiration, as on that wonderful day when he closed his finished Plato, and saw young Pico della Mirandola before him. Opposite them, on the left, are David by Ciuff.a.gni, and a bust of the musician Squarcialupi by Benedetto da Maiano. On the last pillars of the nave, right and left, stand later statues of the Apostles--St Matthew by Vincenzo de' Rossi, and St James by Jacopo Sansovino.

Under Brunelleschi's vast dome--the effect of which is terribly marred by miserable frescoes by Vasari and Zuccheri--are the choir and the high altar. The stained gla.s.s in the windows in the drum is from designs of Ghiberti, Donatello (the Coronation), and Paolo Uccello.

Behind the high altar is one of the most solemn and pathetic works of art in existence--Michelangelo's last effort in sculpture, the unfinished Deposition from the Cross; "the strange spectral wreath of the Florence Pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of Santa Maria del Fiore."[42] It is a group of four figures more than life-size; the body of Christ is received in the arms of His mother, who sustains Him with the aid of St Mary Magdalene and the standing Nicodemus, who bends over the group at the back with a countenance full of unutterable love and sorrow. Although, in a fit of impatience, Michelangelo damaged the work and allowed it to be patched up by others, he had intended it for his own sepulchre, and there is no doubt that the Nicodemus--whose features to some extent are modelled from his own--represents his own att.i.tude as death approached. His sonnet to Giorgio Vasari is an expression of the same temper, and the most precious commentary upon his work:--

[42] _Modern Painters_, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative."

Now hath my life across a stormy sea, Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all Are bidden, ere the final reckoning fall Of good and evil for eternity.

Now know I well how that fond phantasy, Which made my soul the wors.h.i.+pper and thrall Of earthly art, is vain; how criminal Is that which all men seek unwillingly.

Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed, What are they when the double death is nigh?

The one I know for sure, the other dread.

Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest My soul that turns to His great Love on high, Whose arms, to clasp us, on the Cross were spread.

(_Addington Symonds' translation._)

The apse at the east end, or tribuna di San Zen.o.bio, ends in the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, which is also the shrine of Saint Zen.o.bius.

The reliquary which contains his remains is the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and was finished in 1446; the bronze reliefs set forth his princ.i.p.al miracles, and there is a most exquisite group of those flying Angels which Ghiberti realises so wonderfully. Some of the gla.s.s in the windows is also from his design. The seated statues in the four chapels, representing the four Evangelists, were originally on the facade; the St. Luke, by Nanni di Banco, in the first chapel on the right, is the best of the four; then follow St. John, a very early Donatello, and, on the other side, St. Matthew by Ciuff.a.gni and St.

Mark by Niccol da Arezzo (slightly earlier than the others). The two Apostles standing on guard at the entrance of the tribune, St. John and St. Peter, are by Benedetto da Rovezzano. To right and left are the southern and northern sacristies. Over the door of the southern sacristy is a very beautiful bas-relief by Luca della Robbia, representing the Ascension (1446), like a Fra Angelico in enamelled terracotta; within the sacristy are two kneeling Angels also by Luca (1448), practically his only isolated statues, of the greatest beauty and harmony; and also a rather indifferent St. Michael, a late work of Lorenzo di Credi. Over the door of the northern sacristy is the Resurrection by Luca della Robbia (1443), perhaps his earliest extant work in this enamelled terracotta. The bronze doors of this northern sacristy are by Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia, a.s.sisted by Maso and Giovanni di Bartolommeo, and were executed between 1446 and 1467. They are composed of ten reliefs with decorative heads at the corners of each, as in Lorenzo Ghiberti's work. Above are Madonna and Child with two Angels; the Baptist with two Angels; in the centre the four Evangelists, each with two Angels; and below, the four Doctors, each with two Angels. M. Reymond has shown that the four latter are the work of Michelozzo. Of Luca's work, the four Evangelists are later than the two topmost reliefs, and are most beautiful; the Angels are especially lovely, and there are admirable decorative heads between.

Within, are some characteristic _putti_ by Donatello.

The side apses, which represent the right and left transepts, guarded by sixteenth century Apostles, and with frescoed Saints and Prophets in the chapels by Bicci di Lorenzo, are quite uninteresting.

By the door that leads out of the northern aisle into the street, is a wonderful picture, painted in honour of Dante by order of the State in 1465, by Domenico di Michelino, a pupil of Fra Angelico, whose works, with this exception, are hardly identified. At the time that this was painted, the authentic portrait of Dante still existed in the (now lost) fresco at Santa Croce, so we may take this as a fairly probable likeness; it is, at the same time, one of the earliest efforts to give pictorial treatment to the _Purgatorio_. Outside the gates of Florence stands Dante in spirit, clothed in the simple red robe of a Florentine citizen, and wearing the laurel wreath which was denied to him in life; in his left hand he holds the open volume of the _Divina Commedia_, from which rays of burning light proceed and illumine all the city. But it is not the mediaeval Florence that the divine singer had known, which his ghost now revisits, but the Florence of the Quattrocento--with the completed Cathedral and the cupola of Brunelleschi rising over it, with the Campanile and the great tower of the Palazzo della Signoria completed--the Florence which has just lost Cosimo dei Medici, Pater Patriae, and may need fresh guidance, now that great mutations are at hand in Italy. With his right hand he indicates the gate of h.e.l.l and its antechamber; but it is not the torments of its true inmates that he would bid the Florentines mark, but the shameful and degrading lot of the cowards and neutrals, the trimmers, who would follow no standard upon earth, and are now rejected by Heaven and h.e.l.l alike; "the crew of caitiffs hateful to G.o.d and to his enemies," who now are compelled, goaded on by hornets and wasps, to rush for ever after a devil-carried ensign, "which whirling ran so quickly that it seemed to scorn all pause." Behind, among the rocks and precipices of h.e.l.l, the monstrous fiends of schism, treason and anarchy glare through the gate, preparing to sweep down upon the City of the Lily, if she heeds not the lesson. In the centre of the picture, in the distance, the Mountain of Purgation rises over the sh.o.r.e of the lonely ocean, on the little island where rushes alone grow above the soft mud. The Angel at the gate, seated upon the rock of diamond, above the three steps of contrition, confession, and satisfaction, marks the brows of the penitent souls with his dazzling sword, and admits them into the terraces of the mountain, where Pride, Anger, Envy, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, and l.u.s.t (the latter, in the purifying fire of the seventh terrace, merely indicated by the flames on the right) are purged away. On the top of the mountain Adam and Eve stand in the Earthly Paradise, which symbolises blessedness of this life, the end to which an ideal ruler is to lead the human race, and the state of innocence to which the purgatorial pains restore man. Above and around sweep the spheres of the planets, the lower moving heavens, from which the angelic influences are poured down upon the Universe beneath their sway.

Thirteen years after this picture was painted, the Duomo saw Giuliano dei Medici fall beneath the daggers of the Pazzi and their confederates on Sunday, April 26th, 1478. The bell that rang for the Elevation of the Host was the signal. Giuliano had been moving round about the choir, and was standing not far from the picture of Dante, when Bernardo Baroncelli and Francesco Pazzi struck the first blows.

Lorenzo, who was on the opposite side of the choir, beat off his a.s.sailants with his sword and then fled across into the northern sacristy, through the bronze gates of Michelozzo and Luca della Robbia, which Poliziano and the Cavalcanti now closed against the conspirators. The boy cardinal, Raffaello Sansoni, whose visit to the Medicean brothers had furnished the Pazzi with their chance, fled in abject terror into the other sacristy. Francesco Nori, a faithful friend of the Medici, was murdered by Baroncelli in defending his masters' lives; he is very probably the bare-headed figure kneeling behind Giuliano in Botticelli's Adoration of the Magi in the Uffizi.[43]

[43] The Duomo has fairer memories of the Pazzi, than this deed of blood and treachery. Their ancestor at the Crusades had carried the sacred fire from Jerusalem to Florence, and still, on Easter Eve, an artificial dove sent from the high altar lights the car of fireworks in the Piazza--the Carro dei Pazzi--in front of the church, in honour of their name.

But of all the scenes that have pa.s.sed beneath Brunelleschi's cupola, the most in accordance with the spirit of Dante's picture are those connected with Savonarola. It was here that his most famous and most terrible sermons were delivered; here, on that fateful September morning when the French host was sweeping down through Italy, he gazed in silence upon the expectant mult.i.tude that thronged the building, and then, stretching forth his hands, cried aloud in a terrible voice the ominous text of Genesis: "Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth;" and here, too, the fatal riot commenced which ended with the storming of the convent. And here, in a gentler vein, the children of Florence were wont to await the coming of their father and prophet. "The children," writes Simone Filipepi, "were placed all together upon certain steps made on purpose for them, and there were about three thousand of them; they came an hour or two before the sermon; and, in the meanwhile, some read psalms and others said the rosary, and often choir by choir they sang lauds and psalms most devoutly; and when the Father appeared, to mount up into the pulpit, the said children sang the _Ave Maris Stella_, and likewise the people answered back, in such wise that all that time, from early morning even to the end of the sermon, one seemed to be verily in Paradise."

The Opera del Duomo or Cathedral Museum contains, besides several works of minor importance (including the Madonna from the second facade), three of the great achievements of Florentine sculpture during the fifteenth century; the two _cantorie_, or organ galleries, of Donatello and Luca della Robbia; the silver altar for the Baptistery, with the statue of the Baptist by Michelozzo, and reliefs in silver by Antonio Pollaiuolo and Andrea Verrocchio, representing the Nativity of the Baptist by the former, the dance of the daughter of Herodias and the Decollation of the Saint by the latter.

The two organ galleries, facing each other and finished almost simultaneously (about 1440), are an utter contrast both in spirit and in execution. There is nothing specially angelic or devotional about Donatello's wonderful frieze of dancing genii, winged boys that might well have danced round Venus at Psyche's wedding-feast, but would have been out of place among the Angels who, as the old mystic puts it, "rejoiced exceedingly when the most Blessed Virgin entered the Heavenly City." The beauty of rhythmic movement, the joy of living and of being young, exultancy, _baldanza_--these are what they express for us. Luca della Robbia's boys and girls, singing together and playing musical instruments, have less exuberance and motion, but more grace and repose; they ill.u.s.trate in ten high reliefs the verses of the psalm, _Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus_, which is inscribed upon the Cantoria; and those that dance are more chastened in their joy, more in the spirit of David before the Ark. But all are as wrapt and absorbed in their music, as are Donatello's in their wild yet harmonious romp.

In detail and considered separately, Luca's more perfectly finished groups, with their exquisite purity of line, are decidedly more lovely than Donatello's more roughly sketched, lower and flatter bas-reliefs; but, seen from a distance and raised from the ground, as they were originally intended, Donatello's are decidedly more effective as a whole. It is only of late years that the reliefs have been remounted and set up in the way we now see; and it is not quite certain whether their present arrangement, in all respects, exactly corresponds to what was originally intended by the masters. It was in this building, the Opera del Duomo, that Donatello at one time had his school and studio; and it was here, in the early years of the Cinquecento, that Michelangelo worked upon the shapeless ma.s.s of marble which became the gigantic David.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSS OF THE FLORENTINE PEOPLE (FROM OLD HOUSE ON NORTH SIDE OF DUOMO)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ARMS OF THE MEDICI FROM THE BADIA AT FIESOLE.]