At last, weary of idleness, urged by his friends, who had whispered abroad the cause of his malady, and represented that he would more easily free himself of Ghiberti by recommencing his labours, and proving his colleague’s ignorance of architecture, he returned to his post of director, but seeing that his patron’s support retained Ghiberti in office, notwithstanding what had past, he resolved on forcing his retreat through his humiliation. “I might have died in my late illness,” he said, “and had I done so, you have still Ghiberti, whom heaven preserve to you; but as our salary is shared equally, may it please you that our labours be divided also, in order that each of us may prove his anxiety for the republic’s glory. There are now two difficulties to overcome—the construction of scaffoldings, solid and convenient, and adapted for the labours to be prosecuted within and without the dome, and the establishing the chain of masonry which is to bind together the eight sides of the cupola; let him choose one of these, leaving the other to me.”
Not daring to refuse, Ghiberti decided on the latter as most easy of performance, and relying on the cupola of St. John as a pattern, and the master masons for advisers. The scaffoldings of Brunelleschi, entirely different from any used before, were so happily invented, and ably executed, that their models were preserved in the cathedral stores. Ghiberti had established the stonework on one of the eight sides; but his colleague, visiting it in company of the members of the Opera del Duomo, on his return analyzed its construction,—pointed out its defects,—proved its want of solidity,—and said, in conclusion, that Ghiberti’s building and salary should be alike put a stop to.
The latter was, however, not discontinued; but Brunelleschi, thenceforward, was sole director of the works. Observing that the higher they rose, the more time his masons lost, he imagined the constructing of small houses of refreshment on the dome itself, and thus prevented their long absences. The height of the dome, from the cathedral floor to the ball, is three hundred and twenty-seven feet, and the whole was terminated twenty years after Brunelleschi’s death, and in conformity with his designs.
I saw with regret that some of the best statues, those of Florentine saints which ornament the lateral aisles, are in carta pesta; the San Giovanni Gualberto, who holds a cross, and whose expression and execution are alike beautiful, is crumbling away.
On the right hand, entering the church, is the portrait in marble of Brunelleschi, sculptured by his scholar; and near it that of Giotto, the painter and sculptor, the architect of the Campanile, and the labourer’s son, whose genius was first guessed by the artist Cimabue, when crossing the fields on foot he found him, then a shepherd boy, occupied in tracing on a stone the figure of one of his lambs. He took him to Florence, where he became his pupil, soon leaving far behind both his master and all the artists who had, till then, enjoyed celebrity,—studying nature, which they had neglected, and grace, which they had misunderstood. He was celebrated in the verse of his contemporary and friend Dante, whose tomb he afterwards decorated when the poet died in exile. The Campanile was commenced in 1334, and the bas reliefs and the statues which ornament the interior of the edifice are in greater part the work of Giotto’s own chisel, and the remainder executed after his designs.
Beyond his and Brunelleschi’s portrait, and the mausoleum of a Florentine bishop, there is placed, above a side portal of the edifice, a monument in honour of Pietro Farnese, captain of the Florentines, which has, at first sight, a ludicrous effect, the equestrian statue being highly gilded; but the animal, which the warrior bestrides, meek-faced and long-eared. Chosen by the Florentines for their general against the forces of Pisa, the 11th of May, 1363, he led an army against theirs; and his horse killed under him, the sole charger found disposable was an ignoble mule, mounted on which he gained the victory, took prisoner the Pisan general, and the greater part of his army. The 19th of June following, seized by plague, which then desolated Tuscany, he died the same night, deeply regretted by the Florentines.
Near the transept, but on the left hand, is the portrait of Dante by Orcagna, with a sketch of his triple kingdom, and a view of Florence: it is curious as painted in 1430, at the suggestion of a Franciscan monk, who in the church gave lectures on the Divina Commedia. This strange old painting recalls an eventful story; his fame predicted at his birth, in 1265, by the astrologer Brunetto Latini; his love awakened at nine years of age for the Beatrice, who was his dream through life; his bravery as a soldier and ability as an ambassador, and his banishment,—for Charles of Anjou, entering Florence, finding Dante of the Bianchi party, (which he had espoused, says his biographer, principally because the wife, whom he had married and parted from, belonged to that of the Neri,) he issued against him two sentences, which still exist,—the first condemning to spoliation and exile, the last to be burned at the stake with his friends and adherents; a wanderer over a world whose admiration could not compensate for absence from his country; in 1304, in company of his fellow exiles, striving and failing to force a way thither; everywhere received kindly, but wearying his hosts by the proud temper which misfortune soured, or by the very fact of being unfortunate,—for in the company of women he was gay and gentle, though bitterness of retort has been reproached to him by those who provoked it: misunderstood through life, his history is concluded in the verse of Byron:—
“Ungrateful Florence! Dante sleeps afar.”
Above a side door of this lateral aisle is the monument of Peter of Toledo, vice-king of Naples, and father of Eleonora of Toledo, the broken-hearted or the murdered wife of the first duke Cosmo; and nearer the principal entrance, still on the left hand as we face the altar, there is a marble mausoleum, distinguished by a cross, from whose extremities spring lilies, and placed between two eagles. It is believed to contain the ashes of Conrad, the traitor-son of that Emperor Henry the Fourth, who at Canossa was the penitent and victim of Pope Gregory the Seventh, and the Countess Matilda; urged to treason against his father by Urban the Second, Gregory’s successor, and after eight years of civil war, dying despised for the revolt which the court of Rome had instigated, and for the calumnies which he had promulgated against his father as excuse for his unnatural rebellion.
In the octagon space, to the left of the choir, is the Sagrestia de’ Canonici, that which once sheltered Lorenzo de’ Medici from the fury of his foemen, the Pazzi. They had determined on crushing a power which the Pitti had attempted, but vainly, to extinguish in the person of his father Pietro.