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 Niccolò 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 Gesù. 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 assigned 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-ambassadors 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 Zenobius 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 Zenobius; 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 Ciuffagni, 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 glass 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 Pietà, 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 attitude as death approached. His sonnet to Giorgio Vasari is an expression of the same temper, and the most precious commentary upon his work:–
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 worshipper 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 Zenobio, ends in the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, which is also the shrine of Saint Zenobius. The reliquary which contains his remains is the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti, and was finished in 1446; the bronze reliefs set forth his principal miracles, and there is a most exquisite group of those flying Angels which Ghiberti realises so wonderfully. Some of the glass in the windows is also from his design. The seated statues in the four chapels, representing the four Evangelists, were originally on the façade; 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 Ciuffagni and St. Mark by Niccolò 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, assisted 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 mediæval 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 Hell 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 Hell alike; "the crew of caitiffs hateful to God 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 Hell, 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 shore 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 Lust (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 assailants 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]
But of all the scenes that have passed 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 multitude 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 façade), 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.