The Story of Florence Part 10

"Take some wood then," answered the nettled sculptor, "and try to make one thyself." Filippo did so; and when it was finished Donatello was so stupefied with admiration, that he let drop all the eggs and other things that he was carrying for their dinner. "I have had all I want for to-day," he exclaimed; "if you want your share, take it: to thee is it given to carve Christs and to me to make contadini." The rival piece may still be seen in Santa Maria Novella, and there is not much to choose between them. Donatello's is, perhaps, somewhat more realistic and less refined.

The first two chapels of the left transept (fifth and fourth from the choir, respectively,) contain fourteenth century frescoes; a warrior of the Bardi family rising to judgment, the healing of Constantine's leprosy and other miracles of St. Sylvester, ascribed to Maso di Banco; the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the martyrdom of St.

Stephen, by Bernardo Daddi (the painter to whom it is attempted to ascribe the famous Last Judgment and Triumph of Death in the Pisan Campo Santo). All these imply a certain Dantesque selection; these subjects are among the examples quoted for purposes of meditation or admonition in the _Divina Commedia_. The coloured terracotta relief is by Giovanni della Robbia. The frescoes of the choir, by Agnolo Gaddi, are among the finest works of Giotto's school. They set forth the history of the wood of the True Cross, which, according to the legend, was a shoot of the tree of Eden planted by Seth on Adam's grave; the Queen of Sheba prophetically adored it, when she came to visit Solomon during the building of the Temple; cast into the pool of Bethsaida, the Jews dragged it out to make the Cross for Christ; then, after it had been buried on Mount Calvary for three centuries, St. Helen discovered it by its power of raising the dead to life. These subjects are set forth on the right wall; on the left, we have the taking of the relic of the Cross by the Persians under Chosroes, and its recovery by the Emperor Heraclius. In the scene where the Emperor barefooted carries the Cross into Jerusalem, the painter has introduced his own portrait, near one of the gates of the city, with a small beard and a red hood. Vasari thinks poorly of these frescoes; but the legend of the True Cross is of some importance to the student of Dante, whose profound allegory of the Church and Empire in the Earthly Paradise, at the close of the _Purgatorio_, is to some extent based upon it.

The two Gothic chapels to the right of the choir contain Giotto's frescoes--both chapels were originally entirely painted by him--rescued from the whitewash under which they were discovered, and, in part at least, most terribly "restored." The frescoes in the first, the Bardi Chapel, ill.u.s.trating the life of St. Francis, have suffered most; all the peculiar Giottesque charm of face has disappeared, and, instead, the restorer has given us monotonous countenances, almost deadly in their uniformity and utter lack of expression. Like all mediaeval frescoes dealing with St. Francis, they should be read with the _Fioretti_ or with Dante's _Paradiso_, or with one of the old lives of the Seraphic Father in our hands. On the left (beginning at the top) we have his renunciation of the world in the presence of his father and the Bishop of a.s.sisi--_innanzi alla sua spirital corte, et coram patre_, as Dante puts it; on the right, the confirmation of the order by Pope Honorius; on the left, the apparition of St. Francis to St. Antony of Padua; on the right, St.

Francis and his followers before the Soldan--_nella presenza del Soldan superba_--in the ordeal of fire; and, below it, St. Francis on his death-bed, with the apparition to the sleeping bishop to a.s.sure him of the truth of the Stigmata. Opposite, left, the body is surrounded by weeping friars, the incredulous judge touching the wound in the side, while the simplest of the friars, at the saint's head, sees his soul carried up to heaven in a little cloud. This conception of saintly death was, perhaps, originally derived from Dante's dream of Beatrice in the _Vita Nuova_: "I seemed to look towards heaven, and to behold a mult.i.tude of Angels who were returning upwards, having before them an exceedingly white cloud; and these Angels were singing together gloriously." It became traditional in early Italian painting.

On the window wall are four great Franciscans. St. Louis the King (one whom Dante does not seem to have held in honour), a splendid figure, calm and n.o.ble, in one hand the sceptre and in the other the Franciscan cord, his royal robe besprinkled with the golden lily of France over the armour of the warrior of the Cross; his face absorbed in celestial contemplation. He is the Christian realisation of the Platonic philosopher king; "St. Louis," says Walter Pater, "precisely because his whole being was full of heavenly vision, in self banishment from it for a while, led and ruled the French people so magnanimously alike in peace and war." Opposite him is St. Louis of Toulouse, with the royal crown at his feet; below are St. Elizabeth of Hungary, with her lap full of flowers; and, opposite to her, St.

Clare, of whom Dante's Piccarda tells so sweetly in the _Paradiso_--that lady on high whom "perfected life and lofty merit doth enheaven." On the vaulted roof of the chapel are the glory of St.

Francis and symbolical representations of the three vows--Poverty, Chast.i.ty, Obedience; not rendered as in Giotto's great allegories at a.s.sisi, of which these are, as it were, his own later simplifications, but merely as the three mystical Angels that met Francis and his friars on the road to Siena, crying "Welcome, Lady Poverty." The picture of St. Francis on the altar, ascribed by Vasari to Cimabue, is probably by some unknown painter at the close of the thirteenth century.

The frescoes in the following, the Chapel of the Peruzzi, are very much better preserved, especially in the scene of Herod's feast. Like all Giotto's genuine work, they are eloquent in their pictorial simplicity of diction; there are no useless crowds of spectators, as in the later work of Ghirlandaio and his contemporaries. On the left is the life of St. John the Baptist--the Angel appearing to Zacharias, the birth and naming of the Precursor, the dance of the daughter of Herodias at Herod's feast. This last has suffered less from restoration than any other work of Giotto's in Florence; both the rhythmically moving figure of the girl herself and that of the musician are very beautiful, and the expression on Herod's face is worthy of the psychological insight of the author of the Vices and Virtues in the Madonna's chapel at Padua. Ruskin talks of "the striped curtain behind the table being wrought with a variety and fantasy of playing colour which Paul Veronese could not better at his best." On the right wall is the life of the Evangelist, John the Divine, or rather its closing scenes; the mystical vision at Patmos, the seer _dormendo con la faccia arguta_, like the solitary elder who brought up the rear of the triumphal pageant in Dante's Earthly Paradise; the raising of Drusiana from the dead; the a.s.sumption of St. John. The curious legend represented in this last fresco--that St. John was taken up body and soul, _con le due stole_, into Heaven after death, and that his disciples found his tomb full of manna--was, of course, based upon the saying that went abroad among the brethren, "that that disciple should not die"; it is mentioned as a pious belief by St.

Thomas, but is very forcibly repudiated by Giotto's great friend, Dante; in the _Paradiso_ St. John admonishes him to tell the world that only Christ and the Blessed Virgin rose from the dead. "In the earth my body is earth, and shall be there with the others, until our number be equalled with the eternal design."

In the last chapel of the south transept, there are two curious frescoes apparently of the beginning of the fourteenth century, in honour of St. Michael; they represent his leading the Angelic hosts against the forces of Lucifer, and the legend of his apparition at Monte Gargano. The frescoes in the chapel at the end of the transept, the Baroncelli chapel, representing scenes in the life of the Blessed Virgin, are by Giotto's pupil, Taddeo Gaddi; they are similar to his work at a.s.sisi. The a.s.sumption opposite was painted by Sebastiano Mainardi from a cartoon by Domenico Ghirlandaio. In the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament there are more frescoed lives of saints by Taddeo's son, Agnolo Gaddi, less admirable than his work in the choir; and statues of two Franciscans, of the Della Robbia school. The monument of the Countess of Albany may interest English admirers of the Stuarts, but hardly concerns the story of Florence.

From the right transept a corridor leads off to the chapel of the Noviciate and the Sacristy. The former, built by Michelozzo for Cosimo, contains some beautiful terracotta work of the school of the Della Robbia, a tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole, and a Coronation of the Blessed Virgin ascribed to Giotto. This Coronation was originally the altar piece of the Baroncelli chapel, and is an excellent picture, although its authenticity is not above suspicion; the signature is almost certainly a forgery; this t.i.tle of _Magister_ was Giotto's pet aversion, as we know from Boccaccio, and he never used it. Opening out of the Sacristy is a chapel, decorated with beautiful frescoes of the life of the Blessed Virgin and St. Mary Magdalene, now held to be the work of Taddeo Gaddi's Lombard pupil, Giovanni da Milano. There is, as has already been said, very little individuality in the work of Giotto's followers, but these frescoes are among the best of their kind.

The first Gothic cloisters belong to the epoch of the foundation of the church, and were probably designed by Arnolfo himself; the second, early Renaissance, are Brunelleschi's. The Refectory, which is entered from the first cloisters, contains a fresco of the Last Supper--one of the earliest renderings of this theme for monastic dining-rooms--which used to be a.s.signed to Giotto, and is probably by one of his scholars. This room had the invidious honour of being the seat of the Inquisition, which in Florence had always--save for a very brief period in the thirteenth century--been in the hands of the Franciscans, and not the Dominicans. It never had any real power in Florence--the _bel viver fiorentino_, which, even in the days of tyranny, was always characteristic of the city, was opposed to its influence. The beautiful chapel of the Pazzi was built by Brunelleschi; its frieze of Angels' heads is by Donatello and Desiderio; within are Luca della Robbia's Apostles and Evangelists.

Jacopo Pazzi had headed the conspiracy against the Medici in 1478, and, after attempting to raise the people, had been captured in his escape, tortured and hanged. It was said that he had cried in dying that he gave his soul to the devil; he was certainly a notorious gambler and blasphemer. When buried here, the peasants believed that he brought a curse upon their crops; so the rabble dug him up, dragged the body through the streets, and finally with every conceivable indignity threw it into the Arno.

Behind Santa Croce two streets of very opposite names and traditions meet, the _Via Borgo Allegri_ (which also intersects the Via Ghibellina) and the _Via dei Malcontenti_; the former records the legendary birthday of Italian painting, the latter the mournful processions of poor wretches condemned to death.

According to the tradition, Giovanni Cimabue had his studio in the former street, and it was here that, in Dante's words, he thought to hold the field in painting: _Credette Cimabue nella pittura tener lo campo._ Here, according to Vasari, he was visited by Charles the Elder of Anjou, and his great Madonna carried hence in procession with music and lighted candles, ringing of bells and waving of banners, to Santa Maria Novella; while the street that had witnessed such a miracle was ever after called _Borgo Allegri_, "the happy suburb:" "named the Glad Borgo from that beauteous face," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it. Unfortunately there are several little things that show that this story needs revision of some kind. When Charles of Anjou came to Florence, the first stone of Santa Maria Novella had not yet been laid, and the picture now shown there as Cimabue's appears to be a Sienese work. The legend, however, is very precious, and should be devoutly held. The king in question was probably another Angevin Charles--Carlo Martello, grandson of the elder Charles and t.i.tular King of Hungary, Dante's friend, who was certainly in Florence for nearly a month in the spring of 1295, and made himself exceedingly pleasant. Vasari has made a similar confusion in the case of two emperors of the name of Frederick. The picture has doubtless perished, but the Joyous Borgo has not changed its name.

The Via dei Malcontenti leads out into the broad Viale Carlo Alberto, which marks the site of Arnolfo's wall. It formerly ended in a postern gate, known as the Porta della Giustizia, beyond which was a little chapel--of which no trace is left--and the place where the gallows stood. The condemned were first brought to a chapel which stood in the Via dei Malcontenti, near the present San Giuseppe, and then taken out to the chapel beyond the gate, where the prayers for the dying were said over them by the friars, after which they were delivered to the executioner.[37] In May 1503, as Simone Filipepi tells us, a man was beheaded here, whom the people apparently regarded as innocent; when he was dead, they rose up and stoned the executioner to death. And this was the same executioner who, five years before, had hanged Savonarola and his companions in the Piazza, and had insulted their dead bodies to please the dregs of the populace. The tower, of which the mutilated remains still stand here, the _Torre della Zecca Vecchia_, formerly called the _Torre Reale_, was originally a part of the defences of a bridge which it was intended to build here in honour of King Robert of Naples in 1317, and guarded the Arno at this point.

After the siege, during which the Porta della Giustizia was walled up, Duke Alessandro incorporated the then lofty Torre Reale into a strong fortress which he constructed here, the Fortezza Vecchia. In later days, offices connected with the Arte del Cambio and the Mint were established in its place, whence the present name of the Torre della Zecca Vecchia.

[37] See Guido Carocci, _Firenze Scomparsa_, here and generally.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD HOUSES ON THE ARNO]

CHAPTER VIII

_The Baptistery, the Campanile, and the Duomo_

"There the traditions of faith and hope, of both the Gentile and Jewish races, met for their beautiful labour: the Baptistery of Florence is the last building raised on the earth by the descendants of the workmen taught by Daedalus: and the Tower of Giotto is the loveliest of those raised on earth under the inspiration of the men who lifted up the tabernacle in the wilderness. Of living Greek work there is none after the Florentine Baptistery; of living Christian work, none so perfect as the Tower of Giotto."--_Ruskin._

"Il non mai abbastanza lodato tempio di Santa Maria del Fiore."--_Vasari._

To the west of the Piazza del Duomo stands the octagonal building of black and white marble--"_l'antico vostro Batisteo_" as Cacciaguida calls it to Dante--which, in one shape or another, may be said to have watched over the history of Florence from the beginning. "It is," says Ruskin, "the central building of Etrurian Christianity--of European Christianity." Here, in old pagan times, stood the Temple of Mars, with the shrine and sanctuary of the G.o.d of War. This was the Cathedral of Florence during a portion at least of the early history of the Republic, before the great Gothic building rose that now overshadows it to the east.

Villani and other early writers all suppose that this present building really was the original Temple of Mars, converted into a church for St. John the Baptist. Villani tells us that, after the founding of Florence by Julius Caesar and other n.o.ble Romans, the citizens of this new Rome decided to erect a marvellous temple to the honour of Mars, in thanksgiving for the victory which the Romans had won over the city of Fiesole; and for this purpose the Senate sent them the best and most subtle masters that there were in Rome. Black and white marble was brought by sea and then up the Arno, with columns of various sizes; stone and other columns were taken from Fiesole, and the temple was erected in the place where the Etruscans of Fiesole had once held their market:--

"Right n.o.ble and beauteous did they make it with eight faces, and when they had done it with great diligence, they consecrated it to their G.o.d Mars, who was the G.o.d of the Romans; and they had him carved in marble, in the shape of a knight armed on horseback. They set him upon a marble column in the midst of that temple, and him did they hold in great reverence and adored as their G.o.d, what time Paganism lasted in Florence. And we find that the said temple was commenced at the time that Octavian Augustus reigned, and that it was erected under the ascendency of such a constellation that it will last well nigh to eternity."

There is much difference of opinion as to the real date of construction of the present building. While some authorities have a.s.signed it to the eleventh or even to the twelfth century, others have supposed that it is either a Christian temple constructed in the sixth century on the site of the old Temple of Mars, or the original Temple converted into Christian use. It has indeed been recently urged that it is essentially a genuine Roman work of the fourth century, very a.n.a.logous in structure to the Pantheon at Rome, on the model of which it was probably built. The little apse to the south-west--the part which contains the choir and altar--is certainly of the twelfth century. There was originally a round opening at the centre of the dome--like the Pantheon--and under this opening, according to Villani, the statue of Mars stood. It was closed in the twelfth century. The dome served Brunelleschi as a model for the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. The lantern was added in the sixteenth century. Although this building, so sacrosanct to the Florentines, had been spared by the Goths and Lombards, it narrowly escaped destruction at the hands of the Tuscan Ghibellines. In 1249, when the Ghibellines, with the aid of the Emperor Frederick II., had expelled the Guelfs, the conquerors endeavoured to destroy the Baptistery by means of the tower called the Guardamorto, which stood in the Piazza towards the entrance of the Corso degli Adimari, and watched over the tombs of the dead citizens who were buried round San Giovanni. This device of making the tower fall upon the church failed. "As it pleased G.o.d," writes Villani, "through the reverence and miraculous power of the blessed John, the tower, when it fell, manifestly avoided the holy Church, and turned back and fell across the Piazza; whereat all the Florentines wondered, and the People greatly rejoiced."

At the close of the thirteenth century, in those golden days of Dante's youth and early manhood, there were steps leading up to the church, and it was surrounded by these tombs. Many of the latter seem to have been old pagan sarcophagi adopted for use by the Florentine aristocracy. Here Guido Cavalcanti used to wander in his solitary musings and speculations--trying to find out that there was no G.o.d, as his friends charitably suggested--and Boccaccio tells a most delightful story of a friendly encounter between him and some young Florentine n.o.bles, who objected to his unsociable habits. In 1293, Arnolfo di Cambio levelled the Piazza, removed the tombs, and plastered the pilasters in the angles of the octagonal with slabs of black and white marble of Prato, as now we see. The similar decoration of the eight faces of the church is much earlier.

The interior is very dark indeed--so dark that the mosaics, which Dante must in part have looked upon, would need a very bright day to be visible. At present they are almost completely concealed by the scaffolding of the restorers.[38] Over the whole church preside the two Saints whom an earlier Florentine worshipper of Mars could least have comprehended--the Baptist and the Magdalene. And the spirit of Dante haunts it as he does no other Florentine building--_il mio bel San Giovanni_, he lovingly calls it. "In your ancient Baptistery," his ancestor tells him in the fifteenth Canto of the _Paradiso_, "I became at once a Christian and Cacciaguida." And, indeed, the same holds true of countless generations of Florentines--among them the keenest intellects and most subtle hands that the world has known--all baptised here. But it has memories of another kind. The shameful penance of oblation to St. John--if Boccaccio's tale be true, and if the letter ascribed to Dante is authentic--was rejected by him; but many another Florentine, with bare feet and lighted candle, has entered here as a prisoner in penitential garb. The present font--although of early date--was placed here in the seventeenth century, to replace the very famous one which played so large a part in Dante's thoughts. Here had he been baptised--here, in one of the most pathetic pa.s.sages of the _Paradiso_, did he yearn, before death came, to take the laurel crown:--

[38] The earliest of these mosaics are those in the tribune, executed originally by a certain Fra Jacopo in the year 1225; those in the dome are in part ascribed to Dante's contemporary, Andrea Tafi.

Se mai continga che il poema sacro, al quale ha posto mano e cielo e terra, s che m'ha fatto per piu anni macro, vinca la crudelta, che fuor mi serra del bello ovil, dov'io dormii agnello, nimico ai lupi che gli danno guerra; con altra voce omai, con altro vello ritorner poeta, ed in sul fonte del mio battesmo prender il cappello; per che nella Fede, che fa conte l'anime a Dio, quivi entra' io.[39]

[39]

Should it e'er come to pa.s.s that the sacred poem to which both heaven and earth so have set hand, that it hath made me lean through many a year, should overcome the cruelty which doth bar me forth from the fair sheepfold wherein I used to sleep, a lamb, foe to the wolves which war upon it; with changed voice now, and with changed fleece shall I return, a poet, and at the font of my baptism shall I a.s.sume the chaplet; because into the Faith which maketh souls known of G.o.d, 'twas there I entered.

--Par. xxv. 1-11, _Wicksteed's translation_.

This ancient font, which stood in the centre of the church, appears to have had round holes or _pozzetti_ in its outer wall, in which the priests stood to baptise; and Dante tells us in the _Inferno_ that he broke one of these _pozzetti_, to save a boy from being drowned or suffocated. The boy saved was apparently not being baptised, but was playing about with others, and had either tumbled into the font itself or climbed head foremost into one of the _pozzetti_. When the divine poet was exiled, charitable people said that he had done this from heretical motives--just as they had looked with suspicion upon his friend Guido's spiritual wanderings in the same locality.

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

Though the old font has gone, St. John, to the left of the high altar, still keeps watch over all the Florentine children brought to be baptised--to be made _conti_, known to G.o.d, and to himself in G.o.d.

Opposite to him is the great type of repentance after baptism, St.

Mary Magdalene, a wooden statue by Donatello. What a contrast is here with those pagan Magdalenes of the Renaissance--such as t.i.tian and Correggio painted! Fearfully wasted and haggard, this terrible figure of asceticism--when once the first shock of repulsion is got over--is unmistakably a masterpiece of the sculptor; it is as though one of the Penitential Psalms had taken bodily shape.

On the other side of the church stands the tomb of the dethroned Pope, John XXIII., Balda.s.sarre Cossa, one of the earliest works in the Renaissance style, reared by Michelozzo and Donatello, 1424-1427, for Cosimo dei Medici. The fallen Pontiff rests at last in peace in the city which had witnessed his submission to his successful rival, Martin V., and which had given a home to his closing days; here he lies, forgetful of councils and cardinals:--

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well."

The rec.u.mbent figure in bronze is the work of Donatello, as also the Madonna and Child that guard his last slumber. Below, are Faith, Hope, and Charity--the former by Michelozzo (to whom also the architectural part of the monument is due), the two latter by Donatello. It is said that Pope Martin V. objected to the inscription, "quondam papa," and was answered in the words of Pilate: _quod scripsi, scripsi_.

But the glory of the Baptistery is in its three bronze gates, the finest triumph of bronze casting. On November 6th, 1329, the consuls of the Arte di Calimala, who had charge of the works of San Giovanni, ordained that their doors should be of metal and as beautiful as possible. The first of the three, now the southern gate opposite the Bigallo (but originally the _porta di mezzo_ opposite the Duomo), was a.s.signed by them to Andrea Pisano on January 9th, 1330; he made the models in the same year, as the inscription on the gate itself shows; the casting was finished in 1336. Vasari's statement that Giotto furnished the designs for Andrea is now entirely discredited. These gates set before us, in twenty-eight reliefs, twenty scenes from the life of the Baptist with eight symbolical virtues below--all set round with lions' heads. Those who know the work of the earlier Pisan masters, Niccol and Giovanni, will at once perceive how completely Andrea has freed himself from the traditions of the school of Pisa; instead of filling the whole available s.p.a.ce with figures on different planes and telling several stories at once, Andrea composes his relief of a few figures on the same plane, and leaves the background free.

There are never any unnecessary figures or mere spectators; the bare essentials of the episode are set before us as simply as possible, whether it be Zacharias writing the name of John or the dance of the daughter of Herodias, which may well be compared with Giotto's frescoes in Santa Croce. Most perfect of all are the eight figures of the Virtues in the eight lower panels, and they should be compared with Giotto's allegories at Padua. We have Hope winged and straining upwards towards a crown, Faith with cross and sacramental cup, Charity and Prudence, above; Fort.i.tude, Temperance and Justice below; and then, to complete the eight, Dante's favourite virtue, the maiden Humility. The Temperance, with Giotto and Andrea Pisano, is not the mere opposite of Gluttony, with pitcher of water and cup (as we may see her presently in Santa Maria Novella); but it is the cardinal virtue which, St. Thomas says, includes "any virtue whatsoever that puts in practice moderation in any matter, and restrains appet.i.te in its tendency in any direction." Andrea Pisano's Temperance sits next to his Justice, with the sword and scales; she too has a sword, even as Justice has, but she is either sheathing it or drawing it with reluctance.

The lovely and luxuriant decorative frieze that runs round this portal was executed by Ghiberti's pupils in the middle of the fifteenth century. Over the gate is the beheading of St. John the Baptist--two second-rate figures by Vincenzo Danti.

The second or northern gate is more than three-quarters of a century later, and it is the result of that famous compet.i.tion which opened the Quattrocento. It was a.s.signed to Lorenzo Ghiberti in 1403, and he had with him his stepfather Bartolo di Michele, and other a.s.sistants (including possibly Donatello). It was finished and set up gilded in April 1424, at the main entry between the two porphyry columns, opposite the Duomo, whence Andrea's gate was removed. It will be observed that each new gate was first put in this place of honour, and then translated to make room for its better. The plan of Ghiberti's is similar to that of Andrea's gate--in fact it is his style of work brought to its ultimate perfection. Twenty-eight reliefs represent scenes from the New Testament, from the Annunciation to the Descent of the Holy Spirit, while in eight lower compartments are the four Evangelists and the four great Latin Doctors. The scene of the Temptation of the Saviour is particularly striking, and the figure of the Evangelist John, the Eagle of Christ, has the utmost grandeur.

Over the door are three finely modelled figures representing St. John the Baptist disputing with a Levite and a Pharisee--or, perhaps, the Baptist between two Prophets--by Giovanni Francesco Rustici (1506-1511), a pupil of Verrocchio's, who appears to have been influenced by Leonardo da Vinci.

But in the third or eastern gate, opposite the Duomo, Ghiberti was to crown the whole achievement of his life. Mr Perkins remarks: "Had he never lived to make the second gates, which to the world in general are far superior to the first, he would have been known in history as a continuator of the school of Andrea Pisano, enriched with all those added graces which belonged to his own style, and those refinements of technique which the progress made in bronze casting had rendered perfect."[40] In the meantime the laws of perspective had been understood, and their science set forth by Brunelleschi; and when Ghiberti, on the completion of his first gates, was in January 1425 invited by the consuls of the Guild (amongst whom was the great anti-Medicean politician, Niccol da Uzzano) to model the third doors, he was full of this new knowledge. "I strove," he says in his commentaries, "to imitate nature to the uttermost." The subjects were selected for him by Leonardo Bruni--ten stories from the Old Testament which, says Leonardo in his letter to Niccol da Uzzano and his colleagues, "should have two things: first and chiefly, they must be ill.u.s.trious; and secondly, they must be significant. Ill.u.s.trious, I call those which can satisfy the eye with variety of design; significant, those which have importance worthy of memory." For the rest, their main instructions to him were that he should make the whole the richest, most perfect and most beauteous work imaginable, regardless of time and cost.

[40] By these "second gates" are of course meant Ghiberti's second gates: in reality the "third gates" of the Baptistery.

The work took more than twenty-five years. The stories were all modelled in wax by 1440, when the casting of the bronze commenced; the whole was finished in 1447, gilded in 1452--the gilding has happily worn off from all the gates--and finally set up in June 1452, in the place where Ghiberti's other gate had been. Among his numerous a.s.sistants were again his stepfather Bartolo, his son Vittorio, and, among the less important, the painters Paolo Uccello and Benozzo Gozzoli.

The result is a series of most magnificent pictures in bronze.

Ghiberti worked upon his reliefs like a painter, and lavished all the newly-discovered scientific resources of the painter's art upon them.

Whether legitimate sculpture or not, it is, beyond a doubt, one of the most beautiful things in the world. "I sought to understand," he says in his second commentary, that book which excited Vasari's scorn, "how forms strike upon the eye, and how the theoretic part of graphic and pictorial art should be managed. Working with the utmost diligence and care, I introduced into some of my compositions as many as a hundred figures, which I modelled upon different planes, so that those nearest the eye might appear larger, and those more remote smaller in proportion." It is a triumph of science wedded to the most exquisite sense of beauty. Each of the ten bas-reliefs contains several motives and an enormous number of these figures on different planes; which is, in a sense, going back from the simplicity of Andrea Pisano to glorify the old manner of Niccol and Giovanni. In the first, the creation of man, the creation of woman, and the expulsion from Eden are seen; in the second, the sacrifice of Abel, in which the ploughing of Cain's oxen especially pleased Vasari; in the third, the story of Noah; in the fourth, the story of Abraham, a return to the theme in which Ghiberti had won his first laurels,--the three Angels appearing to Abraham have incomparable grace and loveliness, and the landscape in bronze is a marvel of skill. In the fifth and sixth, we have the stories of Jacob and Joseph, respectively; in the seventh and eighth, of Moses and Joshua; in the ninth and tenth, of David and Solomon. The latter is supposed to have been imitated by Raphael, in his famous fresco of the School of Athens in the Vatican. The architectural backgrounds--dream palaces endowed with permanent life in bronze--are as marvellous as the figures and landscapes. Hardly less beautiful are the minor ornaments that surround these masterpieces,--the wonderful decorative frieze of fruits and birds and beasts that frames the whole, the statuettes alternating with busts in the double border round the bas-reliefs. It is the ultimate perfection of decorative art. Among the statuettes a figure of Miriam, recalling an Angel of Angelico, is of peculiar loveliness. In the middle of the whole, in the centre at the lower corners of the Jacob and Joseph respectively, are portrait busts of Lorenzo Ghiberti himself and Bartolo di Michele.

Vasari has said the last word:--

"And in very truth can it be said that this work hath its perfection in all things, and that it is the most beautiful work of the world, or that ever was seen amongst ancients or moderns. And verily ought Lorenzo to be truly praised, seeing that one day Michelangelo Buonarroti, when he stopped to look at this work, being asked what he thought of it and if these gates were beautiful, replied: 'They are so beautiful that they would do well for the Gates of Paradise.' Praise verily proper, and spoken by one who could judge them."