"In the year 1294," wrote Giovanni Villani, who was a youth in Florence at the time, "the city of Florence being in a state of tranquility, the citizens agreed to rebuild the chief church, which was very rude in form and in small proportion to such a city, and that it should be enlarged, and that it should be made all of marble and with carven figures. And the foundation was laid on the day of St. Mary, in September, by the Cardinal Legate of the Pope, in the presence of all the ranks of the Signory of Florence. And it was consecrated to the honor of God and St. Mary, under the name of St. Mary of the Flower (Santa Maria del Fiore). And for the building of the church taxes were ordered, and the Legate and bishops bestowed great indulgences and pardons to everyone who should contribute aid and alms to the work."
The design for the new cathedral was entrusted to Arnolfo di Cambio, who was at that time the official architect of the Commune of Florence,—a remarkable man to whom Florence in a great measure owes her present physiognomy; for not only are the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, Santa Croce and the bulk of the Duomo his, but Giotto's Campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola and the church of Or San Michele are placed where he had planned.
| PLATE XLIV | FACADE OF THE DUOMO AND THE CAMPANILE |
In the design for Santa Croce, Arnolfo had shown a preference for the Gothic forms, then newly imported into Italy, and he now projected a design for the new Cathedral in which the pointed should take the place of the round arch, the stone vaulted roof should be substituted for the flat timber ceiling, and the façade should form a splendid screen, adorned with gable and pinnacle, rich with carving, glowing with mosaics and shining with gold. That the Florentines approved his project is evident from a decree passed before the work had been long in progress, in which "Master Arnolfo" is declared to be exempt from any civic tax during his life, because of his design for the Cathedral, "since" reads the Chronicle, "judging from the magnificent and visible beginnings of the new church, the Commune and people of Florence are like to have a more beautiful and honorable temple than any other in the region of Tuscany."
But before the work had far advanced the building came almost to a standstill, for the strife of parties, which had been but temporarily smothered, broke out anew in Florence, and for some thirty years work on the Cathedral was suspended. Meantime Arnolfo had died, but he left the building so far advanced that his successors would find little difficulty in continuing the main parts of the construction according to his design.
In 1331, however, a portion of the communal tax was set apart for the prosecution of the work, and Giotto di Bondone, already the most famous painter of all Italy, was appointed architect of the Cathedral. "It is not often," says Mrs. Jameson, "that a man takes up a new trade when he is approaching sixty, or even goes into a new path out of his familiar routine. But Giotto seems to have turned without a moment's hesitation from his paints and panels to the less easily wrought materials of the builder and sculptor, without either faltering from the great enterprise or doubting his own power to do it."