Church of S. Andrea, Pistoja. Designed by Gruamons.
It is interesting to compare Gruamons' work with that of the later sculptor of the façade of S. Bartolommeo, and note the rapid progress that art was making towards more perfect and natural form in sculpture. There are only twenty-two years between them, but the sculptor of S. Bartolommeo is far in advance of Gruamons in his representation of the human figure. It is said that Gruamons has left his sign in a portrait of himself on the doorway of S. Andrea, where a curiously negro-like head stands out from the middle of a column. It seems, however, to have acquired its blackness by being used through several centuries as a torch extinguisher at funerals.
Another of Gruamons' churches in Pistoja is that of S. Giovanni Evangelista Fuorcivitas, which is extremely interesting as showing a perfect specimen of the practicable Lombard gallery or outer ambulatory, which in two orders here surrounds the church. The building is entirely encrusted with black and white marble, mostly in alternate lines, but in some places inlaid in chequers. This fashion, which began in this very city of Pistoja, has an historical significance, and was introduced as a symbol of the peace between the factions of Bianchi and Neri, which so long harassed Pistoja. It was taken up afterwards by Siena and Orvieto, and in Florence and Prato, when their respective civic feuds were healed.
Gruamons, or Magister Buono, may have been the chief master of the laborerium at Pistoja with its accompanying Opera di S. Jacopo, which began to keep its registers in 1145. At any rate his family name was kept up in that lodge for more than a century. The Buoni followed the usual custom, and sought commissions in other towns. In 1206 we find one of them restoring and almost rebuilding the cathedral at Fiesole, which had been built in 1028, in the time of Bishop Jacopo Bavaro, but was menacing ruin two centuries later. On the sixth column of the nave, on the right, is inscribed—
"MCCVI. Indict VIII Bonus Magister Restaurus.
Operarius Ecclesiæ Fesulanæ Fecit Ædificare
IIII columnas I. Allex P.P."
Here even at this early date we have the Opera or administration under the direction of the dignitaries of the cathedral. The tower was built by a Maestro Michele in 1213. An inscription on the left of the apse tells us that the building of the tower cost seventy mancussi, a gold coin in use in the Middle Ages.[188] It is supposed that Maestro Buono copied his church from S. Miniato near Florence. The plan is nearly identical, and both have the same peculiarity of the omission of the narthex, or portico, which till this time had been an indispensable part of the ecclesiastic Basilica. It is true the Fiesole church is built of stone, and is simple in ornament, while S. Miniato is of marble and rich in decorations, but in plan and form the two are identical. In each case the same use has been made of the older buildings on the site by leaving them as crypts.