The Campanile and the Baptistery
A short way with Veronese critics--Giotto's missing spire--Donatello's
holy men--Giotto as encyclopaedist--The seven and twenty
reliefs--Ruskin in American--At the top of the tower--A sea of
red roofs--The restful Baptistery--Historic stones--An ex-Pope's
tomb--Andrea Pisano's doors--Ghiberti's first doors--Ghiberti's second
doors--Michelangelo's praise--A gentleman artist.
It was in 1332, as I have said, that Giotto was made capo-maestro,
and on July 18th, 1334, the first stone of his campanile was laid, the
understanding being that the structure was to exceed "in magnificence,
height, and excellence of workmanship" anything in the world. As
some further indication of the glorious feeling of patriotism then
animating the Florentines, it may be remarked that when a Veronese
who happened to be in Florence ventured to suggest that the city
was aiming rather too high, he was at once thrown into gaol, and,
on being set free when his time was done, was shown the treasury as
an object lesson. Of the wealth and purposefulness of Florence at
that time, in spite of the disastrous bellicose period she had been
passing through, Villani the historian, who wrote history as it was
being made, gives an excellent account, which Macaulay summarizes in
his vivid way. Thus: "The revenue of the Republic amounted to three
hundred thousand florins; a sum which, allowing for the depreciation of
the precious metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand
pounds sterling; a larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries
ago, yielded to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two
hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually
produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins;
a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two millions and a half of
our money. Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty
banks conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence only but of
all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were sometimes
of a magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the
Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward III of
England upwards of three hundred thousand marks, at a time when the
mark contained more silver than fifty shillings of the present day,
and when the value of silver was more than quadruple of what it now
is. The city and its environs contained a hundred and seventy thousand
children inhabitants. In the various schools about ten thousand
children were taught to read; twelve hundred studied arithmetic;
six hundred received a learned education."
Giotto died in 1386, and after his death, as I have said, Andrea
Pisano came in for a while; to be followed by Talenti, who is said
to have made considerable alterations in Giotto's design and to
be responsible for the happy idea of increasing the height of the
windows with the height of the tower and thus adding to the illusion
of springing lightness. The topmost ones, so bold in size and so
lovely with their spiral columns, almost seem to lift it.
The campanile to-day is 276 feet in height, and Giotto proposed to
add to that a spire of 105 feet. The Florentines completed the façade
of the cathedral in 1887 and are now spending enormous sums on the
Medici chapel at S. Lorenzo; why should they not one day carry out
their greatest artist's intention?
The campanile as a structure had been finished in 1387, but not for
many years did it receive its statues, of which something must be said,
although it is impossible to get more than a vague idea of them, so
high are they. A captive balloon should be arranged for the use of
visitors. Those by Donatello, on the Baptistery side, are the most
remarkable. The first of these--that nearest to the cathedral and
the most striking as seen from the distant earth--is called John the
Baptist, always a favourite subject with this sculptor, who, since
he more than any at that thoughtful time endeavoured to discover
and disclose the secret of character, is curiously unfortunate in
the accident that has fastened names to these figures. This John,
for example, bears no relation to his other Baptists; nor does the
next figure represent David, as is generally supposed, but owes that
error to the circumstance that when the David that originally stood
here was moved to the north side, the old plinth bearing his name was
left behind. This famous figure is stated by Vasari to be a portrait of
a Florentine merchant named Barduccio Cherichini, and for centuries it
has been known as Il Zuccone (or pumpkin) from its baldness. Donatello,
according to Vasari, had a particular liking for the work, so much that
he used to swear by it; while, when engaged upon it, he is said to
have so believed in its reality as to exclaim, "Speak, speak! or may
a dysentery seize thee!" It is now generally considered to represent
Job, and we cannot too much regret the impossibility of getting near
enough to study it. Next is the Jeremiah, which, according to Vasari,
was a portrait of another Florentine, but which, since he bears his
name on a scroll, may none the less be taken to realize the sculptor's
idea of Jeremiah. It is (according to the photographs) a fine piece
of rugged vivacity, and the head is absolutely that of a real man. On
the opposite side of the tower is the magnificent Abraham's sacrifice
from the same strong hand, and by it Habakkuk, who is no less near
life than the Jeremiah and Job, but a very different type. At both
Or San Michele and the Bargello we are to find Donatello perhaps in
a finer mood than here, and comfortably visible.
For most visitors to Florence and all disciples of Ruskin, the chief
interest of the campanile ("The Shepherd's Tower" as he calls it)
is the series of twenty-seven reliefs illustrating the history of
the world and the progress of mankind, which are to be seen round the
base, the design, it is supposed, of Giotto, executed by Andrea Pisano
and Luca della Robbia. To Andrea are given all those on the west (7),
south (7), east (5), and the two eastern ones on the north; to Luca the
remaining five on the north. Ruskin's fascinating analysis of these
reliefs should most certainly be read (without a total forgetfulness
of the shepherd's other activities as a painter, architect, humorist,
and friend of princes and poets), but equally certainly not in the
American pirated edition which the Florentine booksellers are so ready
(to their shame) to sell you. Only Ruskin in his best mood of fury
could begin to do justice to the misspellings and mispunctuations of
this terrible production.
Ruskin, I may say, believes several of the carvings to be from
Giotto's own chisel as well as design, but other and more modern
authorities disagree, although opinion now inclines to the belief
that the designs for Pisano's Baptistery doors are also his. Such
thoroughness and ingenuity were all in Giotto's way, and they certainly
suggest his active mind. The campanile series begins at the west side
with the creation of man. Among the most attractive are, I think,
those devoted to agriculture, with the spirited oxen, to astronomy, to
architecture, to weaving, and to pottery. Giotto was even so thorough
as to give one relief to the conquest of the air; and he makes Noah
most satisfactorily drunk. Note also the Florentine fleur-de-lis
round the base of the tower. Every fleur-de-lis in Florence is
beautiful--even those on advertisements and fire-plugs--but few are
more beautiful than these.
I climbed the campanile one fine morning--417 steps from the
ground--and was well repaid; but I think it is wiser to ascend the
tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, because one is higher there and, since
the bulk of the dome, which intrudes from the campanile, is avoided,
one has a better all-round view. Florence seen from this eminence
is very red--so uniformly so that many towers rise against it almost
indistinguishably, particularly the Bargello's and the Badia's. One
sees at once how few straight streets there are--the Ricasoli standing
out among them as the exception; and one realizes how the city has
developed outside, with its boulevards where the walls once were,
leaving the gates isolated, and its cincture of factories. The
occasional glimpses of cloisters and verdure among the red are very
pleasant. One of the objects cut off by the cathedral dome is the
English cemetery, but the modern Jewish temple stands out as noticeably
almost as any of the ancient buildings. The Pitti looks like nothing
but a barracks and the Porta Ferdinando has prominence which it gets
from no other point. The roof of the Mercato Centrale is the ugliest
thing in the view. While I was there the midday gun from the Boboli
fortress was fired, instantly having its punctual double effect of
sending all the pigeons up in a grey cloud of simulated alarm and
starting every bell in the city.
Those wishing to make either the campanile or Duomo ascents must
remember to do it early. The closing hour for the day being twelve,
no one is allowed to start up after about a quarter past eleven: a
very foolish arrangement, since Florence and the surrounding Apennines
under a slanting sun are more beautiful than in the morning glare,
and the ascent would be less fatiguing. As it was, on descending, after
being so long at the top, I was severely reprimanded by the custodian,
who had previously marked me down as a barbarian for refusing his offer
of field-glasses. But the Palazzo Vecchio tower is open till five.
The Baptistery is the beautiful octagonal building opposite the
cathedral, and once the cathedral itself. It dates from the seventh
or eighth century, but as we see it now is a product chiefly of the
thirteenth. The bronze doors opposite the Via Calzaioli are open every
day, a circumstance which visitors, baffled by the two sets of Ghiberti
doors always so firmly closed, are apt to overlook. All children born
in Florence are still baptized here, and I watched one afternoon an old
priest at the task, a tiny Florentine being brought in to receive the
name of Tosca, which she did with less distaste than most, considering
how thorough was his sprinkling. The Baptistery is rich in colour
both without and within. The floor alone is a marvel of intricate
inlaying, including the signs of the zodiac and a gnomic sentence which
reads the same backwards and forwards--"En gire torte sol ciclos et
roterigne". On this very pavement Dante, who called the church his
"beautiful San Giovanni," has walked. Over the altar is a gigantic
and primitive Christ in mosaic, more splendid than spiritual. The
mosaics in the recesses of the clerestory--grey and white--are the
most soft and lovely of all. I believe the Baptistery is the most
restful place in Florence; and this is rather odd considering that it
is all marble and mosaic patterns. But its shape is very soothing,
and age has given it a quality of its own, and there is just that
touch of barbarism about it such as one gets in Byzantine buildings
to lend it a peculiar character here.
The most notable sculpture in the Baptistery is the tomb of the ex-Pope
John XXIII, whose licentiousness was such that there was nothing for
it but to depose and imprison him. He had, however, much money, and on
his liberation he settled in Florence, presented a true finger of John
the Baptist to the Baptistery, and arranged in return for his bones
to repose in that sanctuary. One of his executors was that Niccolò
da Uzzano, the head of the noble faction in the city, whose coloured
bust by Donatello is in the Bargello. The tomb is exceedingly fine,
the work of Donatello and his partner Michelozzo, who were engaged
to make it by Giovanni de' Medici, the ex-pontiff's friend, and the
father of the great Cosimo. The design is all Donatello's, and his
the recumbent cleric, lying very naturally, hardly as if dead at
all, a little on one side, so that his face is seen nearly full;
the three figures beneath are Michelozzo's; but Donatello probably
carved the seated angels who display the scroll which bears the
dead Pope's name. The Madonna and Child above are by Donatello's
assistant, Pagno di Lapo Portigiani, a pretty relief by whom we saw
in the Museum of the Cathedral. Being in red stone, and very dusty,
like Ghiberti's doors (which want the hose regularly), the lines of
the tomb are much impaired. Donatello is also represented here by a
Mary Magdalene in wood, on an altar at the left of the entrance door,
very powerful and poignant.
In the ordinary way, when visitors to Florence speak of the Baptistery
doors they mean those opposite the Duomo, and when they go to the
Bargello and look at the designs made by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi in
competition, they think that the competition was for those. But that
is wrong. Ghiberti won his spurs with the doors on the north side,
at which comparatively few persons look. The famous doors opposite
the Duomo were commissioned many years later, when his genius was
acknowledged and when he had become so accomplished as to do what
he liked with his medium. Before, however, coming to Ghiberti,
we ought to look at the work of an early predecessor but for whom
there might have been no Ghiberti at all; for while Ghiberti was at
work with his assistants on these north doors, between 1403 and 1424,
the place which they occupy was filled by those executed seventy years
earlier by Andrea Pisano (1270-1348), possibly from Giotto's designs,
which are now at the south entrance, opposite the charming little
loggia at the corner of the Via Calzaioli, called the Bigallo. These
represent twenty scenes in the life of S. John the Baptist, and below
them are eight figures of cardinal and Christian virtues, and they
employed their sculptor from 1330 to 1336. They have three claims to
notice: as being admirably simple and vigorous in themselves; as having
influenced all later workers in this medium, and particularly Ghiberti
and Donatello; and as being the bronze work of the sculptor of certain
of the stone scenes round the base of Giotto's campanile. The panel
in which the Baptist is seen up to his waist in the water is surely
the very last word in audacity in bronze. Ghiberti was charged with
making bronze do things that it was ill fitted for; but I do not know
that even he moulded water--and transparent water--from it.
The year 1399 is one of the most notable in the history of modern art,
since it was then that the competition for the Baptistery gates was
made public, this announcement being the spring from which many rivers
flowed. In that year Lorenzo Ghiberti, a young goldsmith assisting
his father, was twenty-one, and Filippo Brunelleschi, another
goldsmith, was twenty-two, while Giotto had been dead sixty-three
years and the impulse he had given to painting had almost worked
itself out. The new doors were to be of the same shape and size as
those by Andrea Pisano, which were already getting on for seventy
years old, and candidates were invited to make a specimen relief to
scale, representing the interrupted sacrifice of Isaac, although
the subject-matter of the doors was to be the Life of S. John the
Baptist. Among the judges was that Florentine banker whose name
was beginning to be known in the city as a synonym for philanthropy,
enlightenment, and sagacity, Giovanni de' Medici. In 1401 the specimens
were ready, and after much deliberation as to which was the better,
Ghiberti's or Brunelleschi's--assisted, some say, by Brunelleschi's
own advice in favour of his rival--the award was given to Ghiberti,
and he was instructed to proceed with his task; while Brunelleschi,
as we have seen, being a man of determined ambition, left for Rome to
study architecture, having made up his mind to be second to no one
in whichever of the arts and crafts he decided to pursue. Here then
was the first result of the competition--that it turned Brunelleschi
to architecture.
Ghiberti began seriously in 1408 and continued till 1424, when the
doors were finished; but, in order to carry out the work, he required
assistance in casting and so forth, and for that purpose engaged among
others a sculptor named Donatello (born in 1386), a younger sculptor
named Luca della Robbia (born in 1400), and a gigantic young painter
called Masaccio (born in 1401), each of whom was destined, taking
fire no doubt from Ghiberti and his fine free way, to be a powerful
innovator--Donatello (apart from other and rarer achievements) being
the first sculptor since antiquity to place a statue on a pedestal
around which observers could walk; Masaccio being the first painter
to make pictures in the modern use of the term, with men and women
of flesh and blood in them, as distinguished from decorative saints,
and to be by example the instructor of all the greatest masters,
from his pupil Lippo Lippi to Leonardo and Michelangelo; and Luca
della Robbia being the inspired discoverer of an inexpensive means of
glazing terra-cotta so that his beautiful and radiant Madonnas could
be brought within the purchasing means of the poorest congregation in
Italy. These alone are remarkable enough results, but when we recollect
also that Brunelleschi's defeat led to the building of the cathedral
dome, the significance of the event becomes the more extraordinary.
The doors, as I say, were finished in 1424, after twenty-one years'
labour, and the Signoria left the Palazzo Vecchio in procession to see
their installation. In the number and shape of the panels Pisano set
the standard, but Ghiberti's work resembled that of his predecessor
very little in other ways, for he had a mind of domestic sweetness
without austerity and he was interested in making everything as easy
and fluid and beautiful as might be. His thoroughness recalls Giotto
in certain of his frescoes. The impression left by Pisano's doors is
akin to that left by reading the New Testament; but Ghiberti makes
everything happier than that. Two scenes--both on the level of the
eye--I particularly like: the "Annunciation," with its little, lithe,
reluctant Virgin, and the "Adoration". The border of the Pisano doors
is, I think, finer than that of Ghiberti's; but it is a later work.
Looking at them even now, with eyes that remember so much of the
best art that followed them and took inspiration from them, we
can understand the better how delighted Florence must have been
with this new picture gallery and how the doors were besieged by
sightseers. But greater still was to come. Ghiberti at once received
the commission to make two more doors on his own scale for the south
side of the Baptistery, and in 1425 he had begun on them. These were
not finished until 1452, so that Ghiberti, then a man of seventy-four,
had given practically his whole life to the making of four bronze
doors. It is true that he did a few other things besides, such as the
casket of S. Zenobius in the Duomo, and the Baptist and S. Matthew
for Or San Michele; but he may be said justly to live by his doors,
and particularly by the second pair, although it was the first pair
that had the greater effect on his contemporaries and followers.
Among his assistants on these were Antonio Pollaiuolo (born in
1429), who designed the quail in the left border, and Paolo Uccello
(born in 1397), both destined to be men of influence. The bald head
on the right door is a portrait of Ghiberti; that of the old man
on the left is his father, who helped him to polish the original
competition plaque. Although commissioned for the south side they
were placed where they now are, on the east, as being most worthy of
the position of honour, and Pisano's doors, which used to be here,
were moved to the south, where they now are.
On Ghiberti's workshop opposite S. Maria Nuova, in the Via Bufalini,
the memorial tablet mentions Michelangelo's praise--that these doors
were beautiful enough to be the Gates of Paradise. After that what is
an ordinary person to say? That they are lovely is a commonplace. But
they are more. They are so sensitive; bronze, the medium which Horace
has called, by implication, the most durable of all, has become in
Ghiberti's hands almost as soft as wax and tender as flesh. It does
all he asks; it almost moves; every trace of sternness has vanished
from it. Nothing in plastic art that we have ever seen or shall see
is more easy and ingratiating than these almost living pictures.
Before them there is steadily a little knot of admirers, and on
Sundays you may always see country people explaining the panels to each
other. Every one has his favourite among these fascinating Biblical
scenes, and mine are Cain and Abel, with the ploughing, and Abraham
and Isaac, with its row of fir trees. It has been explained by the
purists that the sculptor stretched the bounds of plastic art too
far and made bronze paint pictures; but most persons will agree to
ignore that. Of the charm of Ghiberti's mind the border gives further
evidence, with its fruits and foliage, birds and woodland creatures,
so true to life, and here fixed for all time, so naturally, that if
these animals should ever (as is not unlikely in Italy where every
one has a gun and shoots at his pleasure) become extinct, they could
be created again from these designs.
Ghiberti, who enjoyed great honour in his life and a considerable
salary as joint architect of the dome with Brunelleschi, died three
years after the completion of the second doors and was buried in
S. Croce. His place in Florentine art is unique and glorious.
The broken porphyry pillars by these second doors were a gift from
Pisa to Florence in recognition of Florence's watchfulness over Pisa
while the Pisans were away subduing the Balearic islanders.
The bronze group over Ghiberti's first doors, representing John
the Baptist preaching between a Pharisee and a Levite, are the
work (either alone or assisted by his master Leonardo da Vinci)
of an interesting Florentine sculptor, Giovanni Francesco Rustici
(1474-1554), who was remarkable among the artists of his time in
being what we should call an amateur, having a competence of his own
and the manners of a patron. Placing himself under Verrocchio, he
became closely attached to Leonardo, a fellow-pupil, and made him his
model rather than the older man. He took his art lightly, and lived,
in Vasari's phrase, "free from care," having such beguilements as a
tame menagerie (Leonardo, it will be remembered, loved animals too and
had a habit of buying small caged birds in order to set them free),
and two or three dining clubs, the members of which vied with each
other in devising curious and exotic dishes. Andrea del Sarto, for
example, once brought as his contribution to the feast a model of this
very church we are studying, the Baptistery, of which the floor was
constructed of jelly, the pillars of sausages, and the choir desk of
cold veal, while the choristers were roast thrushes. Rustici further
paved the way to a life free from care by appointing a steward of his
estate whose duty it was to see that his money-box, to which he went
whenever he wanted anything, always had money in it. This box he never
locked, having learned that he need fear no robbery by once leaving
his cloak for two days under a bush and then finding it again. "This
world," he exclaimed, "is too good: it will not last." Among his pets
were a porcupine trained to prick the legs of his guests under the
table "so that they drew them in quickly"; a raven that spoke like a
human being; an eagle, and many snakes. He also studied necromancy,
the better to frighten his apprentices. He left Florence in 1528,
after the Medici expulsion, and, like Leonardo, took service with
Francis the First. He died at the age of eighty.
I had an hour and more exactly opposite the Rustici group, on the same
level, while waiting for the Scoppio del Carro, and I find it easy
to believe that Leonardo himself had a hand in the work. The figure
of the Baptist is superb, the attitude of his listeners masterly.