[36] Quoted in Mr Armstrong's Lorenzo de' Medici.
[37] See Guido Carocci, Firenze Scomparsa, here and generally.
[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.
[39] Should it e'er come to pass 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
assume the chaplet;
because into the Faith which maketh souls known of God,
'twas there I entered.
–Par. xxv. 1-11, Wicksteed's translation.
[40] By these "second gates" are of course meant Ghiberti's second gates: in reality the "third gates" of the Baptistery.
[41] "There is only one point from which the size of the Cathedral of Florence is felt; and that is from the corner of the Via de' Balestrieri, opposite the south-east angle, where it happens that the dome is seen rising instantly above the apse and transepts" (Seven Lamps).
[42] Modern Painters, vol. ii. "Of Imagination Penetrative."
[43] The Duomo has fairer memories of the Pazzi, than this deed of blood and treachery. Their ancestor at the Crusades had carried the sacred fire from Jerusalem to Florence, and still, on Easter Eve, an artificial dove sent from the high altar lights the car of fireworks in the Piazza–the Carro dei Pazzi–in front of the church, in honour of their name.
[44] It should be observed that Lorenzo was not specially called the "Magnificent" by his contemporaries. All the more prominent members of the Medicean family were styled Magnifico in the same way.
[45] "Grateful to me is sleep, and more the being stone; while ruin and shame last, not to see, not to feel, is great good fortune to me. Therefore wake me not; ah, speak low!"