PIAZZA DEL DUOMO
Over the south doorway there was placed in the end of the sixteenth century a group by Vincenzo Danti, said to be his best work, the Beheading of St. John Baptist; and under are the gates of Andrea Pisano carved in twenty bronze panels with the story of St. John and certain virtues: and around the gate Ghiberti has twined an exquisite pattern of leaves and fruits and birds, it is strange to find Ghiberti's work thus completing that of Andrea Pisano, who, as it is said, had Giotto to help him, till we understand that originally these southern gates stood where now are the "Gates of Paradise" before the Duomo. Standing there as they used to do before Ghiberti moved them, they won for Andrea not only the admiration of the people, but the freedom of the city. To-day we come to them with the praise of Ghiberti ringing in our ears, so that in our hurry to see everything we almost pass them by; but in their simpler, and, as some may think, more sincere way, they are as lovely as anything Ghiberti ever did, and in comparing them with the great gates that supplanted them, it may be well to remind ourselves that each has its merit in its own fashion. If the doors of Andrea won the praise of the whole city, it was with an ever-growing excitement that Florence proclaimed a public competition, open to all the sculptors of Italy, for the work that remained, those two doors on the north and east. Ghiberti, at that time in Rimini at the court of Carlo Malatesta, at the entreaty of his father returned to Florence, and was one of the two artists out of the thirty-four who competed, to be chosen for the task: the other was Filippo Brunellesco. You may see the two panels they made in the Bargello side by side on the wall. The subject is the Sacrifice of Isaac, and Ghiberti, with the real instinct of the sculptor, has altogether outstripped Brunellesco, not only in the harmony of his composition, but in the simplicity of his intention. Brunellesco seems to have understood this, and, perhaps liking the lad who was but twenty-two years old, withdrew from the contest. However this may be, Ghiberti began the work at once, and finished the door on the north side of the Baptistery in ten years. There, amid a framework of exquisite foliage, leaves, birds, and all kinds of life, he has set the gospel story in twenty panels, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with the Pentecost; and around the gate he has set the four Evangelists and the doctors of the Church and the prophets. Above you may see the group of a pupil of Verrocchio, the Preaching of St. John.
In looking on these beautiful and serene works, we may already notice an advance on the work of Andrea Pisano in a certain ease and harmony, a richness and variety, that were beyond the older master. Ghiberti has already begun to change with his genius the form that has come down to him, to expand it, to break down its limitations so that he may express himself, may show us the very visions he has seen. And the success of these gates with the people certainly confirmed him in the way he was going. In the third door, that facing the Duomo, which Michelangelo has said was worthy to be the gate of Paradise, it is really a new art we come upon, the subtle rhythms and perspectives of a sort of pictorial sculpture, that allows him to carve here in such low relief that it is scarcely more than painting, there in the old manner, the old manner but changed, full of a sort of exuberance which here at any rate is beauty. The ten panels which Ghiberti thus made in his own way are subjects from the Old Testament: the Creation of Adam and Eve, the story of Cain and Abel, of Noah, of Abraham and Isaac, of Jacob and Esau, of Joseph, of Moses on Sinai, of Joshua before Jericho, of David and Goliath, of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. At his death in 1455 they were unfinished, and a host of sculptors, including Brunellesco and Paolo Uccello, are said to have handled the work, Antonio del Pollajuolo being credited with the quail in the lower frame. Over the door stands the beautiful work of Sansovino, the Baptism of Christ.
It is with a certain sense of curiosity that one steps down into the old church; for in spite of every sort of witness it has the air of some ancient temple: nor do the beautiful antique columns which support the triforium undeceive us. For long enough now the mosaics of the vault have been hidden by the scaffolding of the restorers; but the beautiful thirteenth-century floor of white and black marble, in the midst of which the font once stood, is still undamaged. The font, which is possibly a work of the Pisani, is on one side, set there, as it is said, because of old the roof of the church was open, and many a winter christening spoiled by rain. [ [86] ] It was not, however, till 1571 that the old font, surrounded by its small basins, one of which Dante broke in saving a man from drowning there, was removed from the church by Francesco I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, for the christening of his son.
Certain vestiges of the oldest church remain: you may see a sarcophagus, one of those which, before Arnolfo covered the church with marble, stood without and held the ashes of some of the greater families. But the most beautiful thing here is the tomb that Donatello made for Baldassare Cossa, pirate, condottiere, and anti-pope, who, deposed by the Council of Constance (1414), came to Florence, and, as ever, was kindly received by the people. It stands beside the north door. On a marble couch supported by lions, the gilt bronze statue of this prince of adventurers, who grasped the very chair of St. Peter as booty, lies, his brow still troubled, his mouth set firm as though plotting new conquests even in the grave. Below, on the tomb itself, two winged angiolini hold the great scroll on which we read the name of the dead man, Johannes Quondam Papa XXIII: to which inscription Martin V, Cossa's successful rival at Constance, is said to have taken exception; but the Medici who had built the tomb answered in Pilate's words to the Pharisees, "What I have written, I have written." The three marble figures in niches at the base may be by Michelozzo, who worked with Donatello, or possibly by Pagano di Lapo, as the Madonna above the tomb almost certainly is.
Coming up once more into the Piazza from that mysterious dim church, dim with the centuries of the history of the city, you come upon two porphyry columns beside the eastern door. They are the gift of Pisa [ [87] ] when her ships returned from the Balearic Islands to Florence, who had defended their city from the Lucchesi. The column with the branch of olive in bronze upon it to the north of the Baptistery reminds us of the miracle performed by the body of S. Zenobio in 490. Borne to burial in S. Reparata, the bier is said to have touched a dead olive tree standing on this spot, which immediately put forth leaves: the column commemorates this miracle. So in Florence they remind us of the gods.
In turning now to the Duomo we come to one of the great buildings of the world. Standing on the site of the old church of S. Salvatore, of S. Reparata, it is a building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, begun in 1298 from the designs of Arnolfo; and it is dedicated to S. Maria del Fiore. Coming to us without the wonderful romantic interest, the mysticism and exaltation of such a church as Notre Dame d'Amiens, without the more resolute and heroic appeal of such a stronghold as the Cathedral of Durham, it is more human than either, the work of a man who, as it were, would thank God that he was alive and glad in the world. And it will never bring us delight if we ask of it all the consummate mystery, awe, and magic of the great Gothic churches of the North. The Tuscans certainly have never understood the Christian religion as we have contrived to do in Northern Europe. It came to them really as a sort of divine explanation of a paganism which entranced but bewildered them. Behind it lay the Roman Empire; and its temples became their churches, its halls of justice their cathedrals, its tongue the only language understood of the gods. It is unthinkable that a people who were already in the twelfth century the possessors of a marvellous decadent art in the painting of the Byzantine school, who, finding again the statues of the gods, created in the thirteenth century a new art of painting, a Christian art that was the child of imperial Rome as well as of the Christian Church, who re-established sculpture and produced the only sculptor of the first rank in the modern world, should have failed altogether in architecture. Yet everywhere we may hear it said that the Italian churches, spoken of with scorn by those who remember the strange, subtle exaltation of Amiens, the extraordinary intricate splendour of such a church as the Cathedral of Toledo, are mere barns. But it is not so. As Italian painting is a profound and natural development from Greek and Roman art, certainly influenced by life, but in no doubt of its parentage; so are the Italian churches a very beautiful and subtle development of pagan architecture, influenced by life not less profoundly than painting has been, but certainly as sure of their parentage, and, as we shall see, not less assured of their intention. Just as painting, as soon as may be, becomes human, becomes pagan in Signorelli and Botticelli, and yet contrives to remain true to its new gods, so architecture as soon as it is sure of itself moves with joy, with endless delight and thanksgiving, towards that goal of the old builders: in such a church as S. Maria della Consolazione outside Todi, for instance,—in such a church as S. Pietro might have been,—and that it is not so, we may remind ourselves, is the fault of that return to barbarism and superstition which Luther led in the North.
What then, we may ask ourselves, were the aim and desire of the Italian builders, which it seems have escaped us for so long? If we turn to the builders of antiquity and seek for their intention in what remains to us of their work, we shall find, I think, that their first aim was before all things to make the best building they could for a particular purpose, and to build that once for all. And out of these two intentions the third must follow; for if a temple, for instance, were both fit and strong it would be beautiful because the purpose for which it was needed was noble and beautiful. Now the first necessity of the basilica, for instance, was space; and the intention of the builder would be to build so that that space should appear as splendid as possible, and to do this and to enjoy it would necessitate, above all things, light,—a problem not so difficult after all in a land like Italy, where the sun is so faithful and so divine. Taking the necessity, then, of the Italian to be much the same as that of the Roman builder when he was designing a basilica,—that is to say, the accom modation of a crowd of people who are to take part in a common solemnity,—we shall find that the intention of the Italian in building his churches is exactly that of the Roman in building his basilica: he desires above all things space and light, partly because they seem to him necessary for the purpose of the church, and partly because he thinks them the two most splendid and majestic things in the world.