"1281, 20 Novembre.—Item cum Magister Ramus filius Paganelli de partibus ultramontanis, qui olim fuit civis senensis, venerit nunc ad civitatem Sen: pro serviendo operi beate Marie de Senis; ex eo quod est de bonis intalliatoribus et sculptoribus, et subtilioribus de mundo qui inveniri possit: et ad dictum servitium morari non potest, eo quod invenitur exbannitus et condenpnatus per contumaciam, occasione quod debuit jacere cum quadam muliere; eo existente extra civitatem Senensem: si videtur vobis conveniens quod debeat rebanniri et absolvi de banno et condenpnationibus suis, ad hoc ut possit libere et secure servire dicto operi ad laudem et honorem Dei, et beate Marie Virginis, in Dei nomine consulate."
The first head architect, who is definitely styled Capo maestro dell' Opera, is Giovanni Pisano, who, when he came to work with his father at the pulpit in 1266, seems to have taken root in Siena, as did his fellow-pupils Lapo, Donato, and Goro. Arnolfo, the fourth of the group, found his mission in Florence.
Signor Milanesi has not succeeded in finding the document referring to Giovanni da Pisa's election, but he finds that, in 1284, the Sienese, in gratitude for the services he has rendered in the building of the Duomo, and especially the façade, gave him the freedom of the city, and immunity from taxes.[220]
Like most artists, Giovanni must have been Bohemian in his ways, or careless in his political expressions, for in October 1290 he was fined the large sum of 600 lire, and had not the wherewithal to pay. He got off by paying a third, but even this Fra Jacopo, one of the Operai of the Duomo, had to advance. It was probably repaid from his salary by instalments.[221] From these documents we gather that the façade was not designed by Lorenzo Maitani, as has generally been supposed. If the Commune of Siena in 1284 acknowledged Giovanni's talent in building the Duomo and the façade, Lorenzo Maitani, who only began to be chief architect of Orvieto from 1310, certainly could not have been old enough to design the front of Siena cathedral. Moreover Milanesi expressly says that, with all his research in the archives, he can find no mention whatever of Maitani's being connected in any prominent manner with Siena cathedral.[222] He most likely worked at it as Giovanni's pupil, and this, with the general tenets of the guild, would sufficiently account for the similarity between the two churches.
The tenets of the guild were certainly veering towards the Gothic, and each generation of its members made a new step. Jacopo Tedesco at Assisi, and Niccolò Pisano in his pulpit, showed the first sign of transition; their sons and pupils, Arnolfo at Florence, and Giovanni at Siena, developed the style still further, and their successors fully expanded it at Milan.
Giovanni was a lover of the Gothic, but was not yet entirely converted. His windows, like Arnolfo's, were pointed, the points emphasized by ornate Gothic gables over them; but the three arches of the doorways are of a Lombard roundness, the pointed effect being only conveyed by the superimposed gables. Yet the turrets and saint-filled niches of the upper part of the façade are as rich, and pointed, and pinnacled as any Gothic cathedral could be. He had not discovered, as the Germans afterwards did, the beauty of the upward line. The old classic leaning to the horizontal line still cuts up the design; and the little Lombard pillared gallery still stretches across the front, though beautified and gothicized. He did not forget the sign of the guild in this transition period; for there on the columns, and beneath the arches, are the lions of Judah.
It is not positively certain whether the present façade was the one originally designed by Giovanni or not. We find that in November 1310, a commission of ten Master builders was formed, to superintend the work of the mosaic, already commenced, and to guard against useless expenses. Milanesi supposes this to refer to some mosaics destined for the façade, especially as in 1358 a Maestro Michele di Ser Memmo was paid six gold florins for his work, "per la sua fadigha (fatica) e magistero di Santo Michele agnolo, a musaica (sic) che fecie a la facciata di duomo nel canto."[223] The front, as it is at present, has no mosaics; probably Giovanni Pisano's plan was modified in later days. It is certain that after Giovanni's death in 1299 great changes of design were made.
The interior has the same mixture as the façade; there are round arches below in the nave, and pointed windows above in the clerestory. The black and white marble, significant of the times though it be, detracts much from the effect of the really fine architecture by cutting it up in slices. Fergusson recognized the purely Italian pedigree of Siena cathedral.[224] "That at Siena," he says, "illustrates forcibly the tendency exhibited by the Italian architects to adhere to the domical forms of the old Etruscans, which the Byzantines made peculiarly their own. It is much to be regretted that the Italians only, of all the Western mediæval builders, showed any predilection for this form of roof. On this side of the Alps it would have been made the most beautiful of architectural forms."
We cannot, however, endorse Mr. Fergusson's next assertion—"in Italy there is no instance of more than moderate success—nothing, indeed, to encourage imitation." In the face of the domes of St. Peter's at Rome, S. Marco at Venice, the cathedrals of Florence, Parma, Padua, Siena, and Monreale, this is rather a hard saying.