Florentine sculpture of the latter part of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries followed essentially the bent of Giovanni Pisano, who endeavoured to unite the decided tendencies of his father Nicolò towards the antique with those of the Gothic style, which then began to assert itself; and he thus traced out for his followers the way which they have long pursued. Andrea Pisano, the son of one Ugolino of Pontedera, was the chief representative of Giovanni’s school during the first half of the fourteenth century. If there is any question as to whether the design of the bronze door of the Baptistery, worked by him in 1330, being Giotto’s, the great influence exercised by Giotto on the sculpture of his time is undoubted. Neither Orcagna, whose most important work, the altar to the Virgin in Or San Michele, has already been mentioned, and who displays both in painting and in sculpture the greatest originality in conception and in form of any artist of this epoch, nor Andrea Pisano’s pupil, Alberto di Arnoldo, to whom the grave and noble group of the Virgin with Angels in the Oratorium of Bigallo is owing, was able to escape the influence of Giotto. The decoration of the façade of the cathedral, of the belfry and interior of the baptistery, as also of the side doors of the cathedral, with sculpture, statues, reliefs, and ornaments, gave employment, irrespectively of others, to numerous artists from foreign parts, but much of their work has unfortunately been destroyed or mutilated. Meanwhile the churches were being adorned with numerous frescoes and altar panels, particularly Sta. Croce, so rich in chapels, which was only completed in the following century, Sta. Trinità, which was enlarged in 1383, Sta. Maria Novella, Ognissanti, and others, in which work Agnolo Gaddi, Orcagna, Giovanni da Milano, Jacopo del Casentino, and many others were employed. Before the middle of the century the great chapter hall of Sta. Maria Novella, commonly called Capellone degli Spagnuoli, which contains the mural paintings ascribed, without ground, to the Siennese painter, Simon Martini, and Taddeo Gaddi, had been built by a citizen of Florence, named Buonamico di Lapo Guidalotti. The frescoes from the history of St. Benedict, by Spinello of Aretino, in San Miniato al Monte, date after the year 1380, and those from the New Testament in the Rinuccini chapel, probably by Giovanni da Milano,[32] somewhat earlier. Orcagna, who next to Giotto possessed the most catholic spirit of the century, had breathed a fresher and more original life into the school then dominant. He was followed pre-eminently by the two last-named masters, who, notwithstanding the duration of the Giottoesque traditions, herald in the coming epoch.
Not alone the end of the thirteenth, but the onward marching fourteenth century likewise beheld the establishment of great charitable institutions. In the year 1377 the building of the hospital was commenced, which Bonifacio de’ Lupi of Soragna, from Parma, formerly Podestà and Capitano del Popolo, dedicated as a mark of attachment to the city which had bestowed its freedom on him. In the course of centuries it has been much changed, but still exists as the Spedale di Bonifazio. Seven years later Lemmo Balducci, of Monticatini, founded the hospital of San Matteo, on the site now occupied by the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1400 the hospital Sta. Maria dell’Umiltà (San Giovanni di Dio) was erected by Simone Vespucci, near the houses of his family. Churches and monasteries followed one another, and, as the enlargement of the square of the Signory necessitated the demolition of a church, it was rebuilt in another place. In 1394 Bishop Onofrio Visdomini consecrated the magnificent charter-house of the Acciaiuoli, which was established at the public cost. In 1392 the convent Il Paradiso, before Porta San Nicolò, on the slope of the hill of Arcetri and Miniato, was founded by Messer Antonio degli Alberti, under the influence of the excitement created in the ecclesiastical world, then distracted with the great schism, by the report of the prophecies and piety of Bridget of Sweden, whose fame extended far beyond Rome, where she passed so many years of her life. This period showed itself grateful towards men of merit. In 1393 the directors of San Maria del Fiore received permission to raise a monument to John Hawkwood, who, as a commander under the name of Giovanni Aguto, had the thanks of the Republic for his faithful services. A year later it was resolved to erect in the same church a monument to the learned and useful public servant, the Augustine monk Luigi Marsigli. By a decree passed in the year 1396 it was intended to perpetuate in the same manner the memory of the lawyer Accursio, Zanobi da Strada, also Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The decree was, however, never carried out.
The power of the aristocracy, at the head of which were the Albizzi, now approached its height. After the unfortunate attempt of 1397 to obtain some popular balance to this domination, a less violent state of affairs came gradually about, one manifestation of which was the great expenditure of money, both by the State and private individuals, in the prosecution of important and valuable works. This activity renders the period worthy to be compared with the end of the previous century, and formed a new epoch in the history of art. It was formerly the custom to associate the name of the Medici with the outburst of the Italian Renaissance, and likewise with the height of its perfection at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They had, however, only followed in the footsteps of their predecessors the Albizzi, and Pope Julius II.
The stages of the progress of the Renaissance are visible, in following the history of art, from Benci di Cione, to Brunellesco, from Orcagna and Alberto d’Arnoldo to Ghiberti and Donatello, from Orcagna again, Spinello, and Nicolò di Pietro, to Masolino and Masaccio. In the province of architecture, classical art entered again upon its rights under the influence of the new spirit. Brunellesco, who, while in his native town, had fixed his attention on Roman edifices, accustomed his eye when in Rome to the large dimensions and simple yet harmonious forms of ancient art. The Italian Gothic, which is not of one cast, but more or less dependent upon the older forms of art, must, in comparison with the latter, appear arbitrary in its character. Yet the classical principle obtained by no means an easy victory. The greatest work of the period, the dome of Sta. Maria del Fiore, is the result of a compromise, which under the circumstances was unavoidable, between the traditions of two epochs, and between the characters of two different tendencies. The requirements both of a strict division and demarcation of masses, and the perception of grand beauty and ample space had also to be reconciled. So in other branches of art the Gothic style asserted itself for a length of time by the side of the new tendency.
In February 1393 a commission was first appointed for the building of the dome, the sacristy, and the canonica of the cathedral.[33] But it was a full quarter of a century before the work was fairly begun. On August 19, 1418, the famous competition, which has since been celebrated in a novel, was invited for models of the dome. On November 14, 1419, a commission of ‘Officiales Cupolæ’ was appointed, consisting of four of the principal citizens. April 16, 1420, the office of Proveditores was conferred on Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Battista d’Antonio; and on August 12, 1434, it was resolved that the lantern with which the dome was to be closed should be built after Brunellesco’s model. The lantern was, however, only completed in 1462, sixteen years after the great artist’s death.[34] The greatest and most complex work of modern architecture belongs consequently to the time when the Albizzis held power. Meanwhile many other buildings were undertaken. In 1411 an illustrious citizen, Nicolò Davanzati Bostichi, began the construction of the convent S. Michele of Doccia, near Fiesole, which, built against the dark background of the wooded hillside, can be seen far and wide. In 1416 the plan for the rebuilding of San Lorenzo was sketched out; in 1421 the great foundling hospital of the Innocents, with its beautiful portico on the Piazzi of the Annunziata, was begun; and twelve years later Sto. Spirito, the two latter after Brunellesco’s designs. Notwithstanding some defects, owing chiefly to the difficulty, imperfectly surmounted, of continuing the colonnade from the nave through the transept and choir, and to the unsuitability of the dome to this form, Sto. Spirito is the finest example of the independent adoption of the Roman basilica style for modern ecclesiastical architecture. Sta. Maria Novella was consecrated September 8, 1420, by Pope Martin V., for whom a part of the adjoining convent had been converted into a dwelling the year before. This was followed the next day by the consecration of Sta. Maria Nuova (Sant’Egidio) by Cardinal Antonio Correr, Bishop of Bologna, to which ceremony the frescoes refer with which Bicci di Lorenzo, who superintended the building, adorned the façade under the modern portico of the present day.
Filippo degli Scolari, who, under the name of Pippo Spano, had been influential in Hungary in the days of King Sigismund, ordered upon his death, in 1426, the construction, by Brunellesco, of a great central building for the Camaldolensians of the Angeli, but it went no further than a portion of the vast octagon, which was vulgarly called Il Castellaccio.[35] The Place of the Signory was still too small, and the wish to procure more space for the palace on the south side occasioned the demolition in 1410 of a side-aisle of San Piero Scheraggio. This church, after being gradually more and more mutilated, made way a century and a half later for the edifice of the Uffizi, by whom this quarter of the city, in which streets and houses were crowded together down to the river-side, was completely transformed.
The splendour and beauty of the public buildings necessarily influenced the construction of private dwellings. The narrow houses, lofty in proportion to their base, fell gradually into disuse, the more as the city, which had been considerably enlarged, afforded greater space. The beginning of the fifteenth century, which reached its climax in the Florentine palaces, turned the scale in this respect; but, as already remarked in the introduction, the mediæval traditions were here more faithfully adhered to than in ecclesiastical architecture. Moreover, a sense of timidity in passing certain limits existed in this case, which was connected with the circumstances of a free republic. This feeling has been recognised in Cosmo de’ Medici, and will be found again in Filippo Strozzi. We are reminded of the same fact even in the following century by the history of the Bartoline house on the Piazza Sta. Trinità, the door and window frames of which were considered unsuitable for a private dwelling, though they were soon to appear simple enough. In earlier times, too, there were large private houses, but their number appears to have been inconsiderable. In the first decade of the fifteenth century several were erected, which we still behold essentially in their original form. The house of Nicolò da Uzzano in Via de’ Bardi, already mentioned, built probably about 1420, is of large proportions, but perfectly plain, and without any sign of the modern spirit. The palace of the Bardi family in Via del Fosso indicates, both by its straight-sided façade and by the square courtyard with the antique arrangement of the columns, the innovations of the new style; while the broad, projecting, wooden roof and the plain windows recall an earlier time. On the Trinity bridge the houses of the Capponi and Gianfigliazzi retain something of the ancient style. In the seventeenth century the interior of the house of the Albizzi, the residence of Piero, Maso, Rinaldo, was rebuilt. This building is in the street named after them, in which palace follows palace, though the full effect is lost, owing to the narrow space. The exterior bears, however, decidedly the mark of time, which is still more the case with the neighbouring palace of the Alessandri.
The streets were mostly paved with flagstones (lastrico), even in the suburbs—a custom which gradually replaced the causeways of tiles (ammattonato) or of small stones (selciato); and when adopted in the smaller Tuscan towns contributed to give them a clean and well-to-do appearance. Even before the end of the thirteenth century this kind of pavement is said to have been used. The stones were procured from the hill of San Giorgio, adjoining the city on the left bank of the river, and the immediate neighbourhood, as well as from the quarries of Fiesole and Golfolina, already mentioned. For a long time the stones were left in their polygonal quarry form, until in recent times it was preferred to hew them square. The laborious and costly work required by a strong and perfectly uniform embankment to the sewers of the city would progress but slowly. It was placed under the careful superintendence of the commissariat officials (officiales grasciæ), to whom was especially entrusted the charge of those streets in which the Barbary-horse races took place.[36] The paving of the Place of the Annunziata—the centre of which remains, however, at the present day unpaved, like those of Sta. Maria Novella, San Marco, and others—was first undertaken, in 1421, by the Servite monks, who solicited subsidies for the purpose, in consideration of the crowds which thronged to the miraculous image in their church.
It is comprehensible that the noticeable revolution in architecture should likewise affect the sister arts. Here, however, we encounter in the first rank two artistic characters essentially differing from one another. With Lorenzo Ghiberti the influence of the school of Giotto is very perceptible, and in the reliefs, his master-pieces, he allows the picturesque principle to predominate to a certain extent, and with a careful calculation of the effect, which to some degree surpasses the ability or courage of the painter so active in his youth. The attitudes and drapery, however, of Ghiberti’s figures are in harmony with the spirit of antiquity which had inspired Nicolò Pisano more than a century and a half earlier. The full outbreak of realism in conception and form is displayed in the somewhat younger Donatello, who, unpoetical and less imaginative than Ghiberti, depends for models rather upon real, if even less beautiful, nature, than upon works of antiquity, of which, indeed, Rome afforded him but scanty and doubtful specimens. Both were goldsmiths, whose art had at that time reached a high degree of perfection, and was distinguished by the production of great works. It was the profession which Brunellesco had originally followed, and for centuries remained connected with that of the sculptor. In 1408 Ghiberti, then only twenty-two, received the commission for his first bronze door of the Baptistery, the completion of which required more than twenty years. In 1414 he executed the statue of St. John, and six years later that of St. Matthew, for two niches on the exterior of the ground-floor of Or San Michele, the sculptural adornment of which, at the cost of the guilds, had been determined upon in 1406. In 1424 the execution of the second door of the Baptistery was entrusted to him, which was finished twenty-eight years after, three years before his death. One work of less importance remains from the year 1428—the bronze chest executed for the brothers Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici for the reception of the relics belonging to the Camaldulensian convent of the Angeli.[37] In 1411 Donatello began the statue of St. Mark, which he produced, together with that of St. Peter, for Or San Michele; about 1420 he began the monument for Pope John XXIII.; and in 1427 he was commissioned by the Medici to execute the monument of Cardinal Rinaldo Brancacci for Naples. His most excellent work in respect to lightness and grace, and which is without a touch of the heaviness so often characteristic of him, is the statue of St. George for Or San Michele. The date of the production of this work can as little be determined as that of the excellent figures of the Prophets which adorn the niches on the belfry of Sta. Maria del Fiore.
In painting the spirit of realism gained the victory much more slowly, and to a far less extent. Even when this victory had been obtained in Florence, the softer feeling and typical form derived from Giotto prevailed in other parts of central and upper Italy in peculiar and flourishing schools. Not long before Masaccio had begun his frescoes in the Brancacci chapel in the Carmine, which was consecrated in 1422, the Camaldulensian Don Lorenzo had painted his beautiful pictures, which still represent the tendency of the previous century, although with a freshness and freedom far superior to the later Giottesque style. And Fra Angelico da Fiesole, who in 1407 entered the Dominican cloister of the little town whence he derived his name, remained his whole life long true to the tradition to which he has given the consecration of gentle poverty, pious fervency, religious sensibility, and at the same time, naïve simplicity. Not even Gentile da Fabriano, a son of the Anconite border, who was gifted with a more lively natural feeling and graceful freshness and serenity, and in 1421 had himself inscribed in the list of Florentine painters, succeeded in breaking through this narrow circle, which did not afford sufficient scope to the creative power of the new spirit of art. Masaccio has given expression to this spirit in a manner which has served as example to the most highly developed periods, by uniting the most true, lifelike, and varied expression with free but nobly naturalistic form. The artists who stand more or less under the influence of Masaccio, and also of the modern plastic art, belong chiefly to the period which we shall contemplate further on.