The Story of Florence

by Edmund G. Gardner

PORTA DELLA MANDORLA, DUOMO

The Duomo has had three façades. Of the first façade, the façade 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 façade, commenced in 1357, and still in progress in 1420, was left unfinished, and barbarously destroyed towards the end of the sixteenth century. A fresco by 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 façade. Some of the statues that once decorated it still exist. The Boniface reappeared upon it from the first façade, between St. Peter and St. Paul; over the principal 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 Zenobius 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 Niccolò 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 façade, 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. Zenobius. There is a curious tradition that Donatello placed Farinata degli Uberti on the façade; and few men would have deserved the honour better. After the sixteenth century the façade remained a desolate waste down to our own times. The present façade, 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.

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 façade, 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 cluster 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 mediæval 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 Pietà.

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 génie florentin dans toute l'indépendance de sa pensée." It was commenced by Giovanni di Ambrogio, the chief master of the canons' gate; and finished by Niccolò 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 Niccolò 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 noble 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 Lust; 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 space beneath the dome, where the choir is placed, extending into three polygonal apses, those to right and left representing the transepts.