Arnolfo di Cambio

“ We have thus written the life of Arnolfo as briefly as possible ; and if his works are far from approaching the perfection attained in our day, he yet well deserves to be held in grateful remembrance, since, being himself in the midst of so much darkness, he yet showed to those who came after him the true path towards perfection. ”

“ Arnolfo, by whose labours architecture made equal progress with that of painting under the influence of Cimabue, was born in the year 1232, and was thirty years old when his father died. He had already attained high repute, having not only acquired from his father whatever the latter could teach, but also studied the art of design under Cimabue, for the purpose of employing it in sculpture. He was now considered the best architect in Tuscany, and the Florentines confided to him the construction of the outer circle of their city walls, which were founded in 1284 ”

“ It is said that when Arnolfo began the two first lateral doors of S. Maria del Fiore, he caused some fig leaves to be carved in a frieze, which were the armorial bearings of his father Lapo, from which it may be inferred that the family of the Lapi, now among the nobility of Florence, derives its origin from him. Others say that Filippo di Ser Brunellesco was also among the descendants of Arnolfo. But I let this pass for what it is worth, and return to Arnolfo, for there are some who say that the Lapi originally came from Figaruolo, a castle situated at the mouth of the Po. ”

“ They were not exclusively sculptors, however, any more than Arnolfo was. Lapo was employed in 1281 as architect at Colle, where Arnolfo's reputed father, the elder Lapo or Jacopo il Tedesco, had been engaged by King Manfred long before him. Goro di Ciucci Ciuti had three sons, Neri, Ambrogio, and Goro, all in the guild. In 1306 we find them all engaged together in the fountain of Follonica at Siena. In 1310 Neri's sons Ciolo and Nuto are mentioned; one of them, having graduated, is old enough to have a pupil, named Teri. Here is the deed of apprenticeship—
No. ”

“ These Arnolfo gives,—thoroughly and wisely built; the successions of gable roof being a new device for strength, much praised in its day.
This stern humor did not last long. Arnolfo himself had other notions; much more Cimabue and Giotto; most of all, Nature and Heaven. Something else had to be taught about Christ than that He was wounded to death. Nevertheless, look how grand this stern form would be, restored to its simplicity. It is not the old church which is in itself unimpressive. It is the old church defaced by Vasari, by Michael Angelo, and by modern Florence. ”

“ The Florentines, in the meanwhile, wishing to build walls in the Valdarno di Sopra round Castello di San Giovanni and Castel Franco, for the convenience of the city and of their victualling by means of the markets, Arnolfo made the design for them in the year 1295, and satisfied them in such a manner, as well in this as he had done in the other works, that he was made citizen of Florence. ”

“ Arnolfo, whom we see not only on a tablet in the left aisle, in relief, with his plan, but also more than life size, seated beside Brunelleschi on the Palazzo de' Canonici on the south side of the cathedral, facing the door, was then sixty-two and an architect of great reputation. Born in 1232, he had studied under Niccolo Pisano, the sculptor of the famous pulpit at Pisa (now in the museum there) , of that in the cathedral in Siena, and of the fountain at Perugia (in all of which Arnolfo probably helped) , and the designer of many buildings all over Italy. ”

“ Well, you will find the fact to be, there was a great Northman builder, a true son of Thor, who came down into Italy in 1200, served the order of St. Francis there, built Assisi, taught Arnolfo how to build, with Thor's hammer, and disappeared, leaving his name uncertain—Jacopo—Lapo—nobody knows what. Arnolfo always recognizes this man as his true father, who put the soul-life into him; he is known to his Florentines always as Lapo's Arnolfo.
That, or some likeness of that, is the vital fact. You never can get at the literal limitation of living facts. ”

“ Arnolfo's own unaided sculpture may be seen at its best in the ciborium in S. Paolo Fuori le Mura in Rome; but it is chiefly as an architect that he is now known. He had already given Florence her extended walls and some of her most beautiful buildings—the Or San Michele and the Badia—and simultaneously he designed S. Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari has it that Arnolfo was assisted on the Duomo by Cimabue ”

“ It is more than probable that these concessions were dictated by the greater prominence which the cupola was assuming in Arnolfo's new vision of his temple. Now is it impossible, that he might have nearly anticipated the exact plan of the heir of his inspiration and partner of his glory? The tendency is that way. But, with the completion of the clerestory and the unification of the smaller cupolas, Arnolfo departs, and, after an interval of a century and a quarter, Brunelleschi enters. ”

“ Plainly enough, since Arnolfo had set the example in the clerestory, the windows of the cupola were also to be circular instead of pointed. His inventive faculties were therefore restricted to the organization of that vast dream, to the determination of the ascending curves and the conception of the lantern. It was not the offspring of his soul, but of his mind, that Filippo had offered the syndics and superintendents; and the inventor of new combinations and possibilities of matter is apt to possess a more elastic temperament than the creator of new forms of beauty. ”

“ Arnolfo, being now considered, as he was, a most excellent architect, had so completely acquired the confidence of the Florentines, that no work of importance was undertaken without his advice ; thus, having finished in that same year the foundations of the outer-wall of the city, which he had commenced as above related, together with the towers of the gates, all of which he nearly completed, he next planned and commenced the Palazzo de’ Signori, the design of which is similar to that of Casentino, built by his father, Lapo, for the Counts of Poppi. ”

“ In the year 1285, Arnolfo founded the Loggia and piazza of the Priori, he rebuilt the principal chapel of the Badia (abbey) of Florence, with one on each side of it, restoring the church and choir, which had been constructed on a much smaller scale by Count Ugo, the founder of that abbey. [27] For Cardinal Giovanni degli Orsini, the pope’s legate in Tuscany, Arnolfo erected the campanile of the above-mentioned church, a work highly appreciated in those times, and deservedly so ; but the stone-work of this tower was not completed until the year 1330. ”

“ But neither Vasari nor Milanesi seem to reflect that there might have been two Lapi. Certainly, if two youths are fellow-disciples of one Master, it is not probable that the senior should be the son of the other. On the other hand, if "Jacopo il Tedesco," said to be Arnolfo's father, was elected head architect at Assisi in 1228, how could he have been a young pupil of Niccolò di Pisa in 1266? ”

“ 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. ”

“ And finally, having sent the model of a tomb to Sicily, to the Abbey of Monreale, for the Emperor Frederick and by order of Manfred, he died, leaving Arnolfo, his son, heir no less to the talent than to the wealth of his father. ”

“ His next work was the foundation, in 1294, of the church of S, Croce, where the friars minors are. Arnolfo designed the nave and side aisles of this church on such a large scale that he was unable to vault the space under the roof owing to the great distances, so with much judgment he made arches from pillar to pillar, and on these he placed the roof with stone gutters along the top of the arches to carry off the water, inclined at such an angle that the roof should be safe, as it is, from the danger of damp. ”

“ Giovanni Cimabue, the father of Florentine painting as Arnolfo of Florentine architecture, survives only as a name in Dante's immortal verse. Not a single authentic work remains from his hand in Florence. His supposed portrait in the cloisters of Santa Maria Novella is now held to be that of a French knight; the famous picture of the Madonna and Child with her angelic ministers, in the Rucellai Chapel, is shown to be the work of a Sienese master ”

“ Forsch.; Antologia di Firenze, v. i. ↑ Book viii, chap. 7. ↑ The braccio of Florence is one foot eleven inches, English measure. ↑ 1310, See Necrologio di Santa Reparata. ↑ Among the meritorious and well-authenticated works of Arnolfo, may be reckoned the tomb of Cardinal Braye, in the church of San Domenico, at Orvieto. In this work, he displayed equal power as an architect, sculptor, and mosaic worker. ↑ This historical work is among the many that have disappeared from the church.—Ed. ”

“ Alphonso ordered the restitution of the money, excepting a small tribute to the confiscators, which he made good to the Comacine Masters out of his own purse. [306]
From 1484 to 1508, a Maestro Tomaso da Como, sometimes called Tomaso delle parti di Lombardia, master sculptor, was living in Naples. He was paid for the carving of the principal door of the church of the Annunziata, which his son Giovanni finished after his death. His will still exists. ”

“ Arnolfo had certainly a taste for the polychrome in architecture, which may or may not have been imbibed in Rome, while working at that lodge with Peter—whom Cavalcaselle considers was one of the Cosmati, and who certainly did the ciborium at S. Paolo, though Arnolfo's name is absent in that work. I have found some other members of the Roman Lodge inscribed above a bronze door in S. John Lateran. On the archivolt is written—"Hui opis Ubert et Petr: F͡rs. Māgistri Lausenen. Fecer͡unt." Over another bronze door in the sacristy they are written as—"Ubert Magister, et Petrus. Ei: Fr. ”

“ To understand the man Pietro as well as the artist, we must study in the Cambio, for there his portrait hangs face to face with a whole set of his frescoes, and the contrast of the painter’s face and the faces he invariably gave to his saints is almost as strange as that between the Umbrian saints and{217} the history of the times in which they lived and worked. ”

“ I know that I could not live in Italy, and I suppose that I should be dreadfully offended and grieved by the actual state of the people, in the midst of all the past and present glory and beauty, which remains a radiant halo round their social and political degradation. But I did once so long to live in Italy, and I have lately so longed to see it, that these journals of Arnold's have made me cry like a child with yearning and disappointment. ”

“ But for the pure Gothic of Giotto, the predominance of the round in the tribunes and cupola would overwhelm Arnolfo's pointed witchery beneath the clerestory. As it is, the supremacy of the classic at one end of the stately pile is balanced by the ascendency of the Gothic at the other. High up in air the pious rivalry between the two great styles is continued, each lifting its choicest offering to the very footstool of the Padre Eterno, each doing its best in honor of our Lady of Flowers. ”

“ This halcyon season was the boyhood of Dante and Giotto, the prime of Arnolfo and Cimabue. The buildings whereby the City of the Flower is still made beautiful above all cities of Italian soil, were rising. The people abode in industry and order beneath the sway of their elected leaders. ”

“ Close by—in the same chapel—is a little door which the sacristan will open, disclosing a portion of Arnolfo's building with perishing frescoes which are attributed to Buffalmacco, an artist as to whose reality much scepticism prevails. They are not in themselves of much interest, although the sacristan's eagerness should not be discouraged; but Buffalmacco being Boccaccio's, Sacchetti's, Vasari's (and, later, Anatole France's) amusing hero, it is pleasant to look at his work and think of his freakishness. ”

“ The opinions of Arnobius, as appears from the commentary, are semi-Pelagian.
ARNOLD, known as “Arnold of Brescia” (d. 1155) , one of the most ardent adversaries of the temporal power of the popes. He belonged to a family of importance, if not noble, and was born probably at Brescia, in Italy, towards the end of the 11th century. He distinguished himself in his monastic studies, and went to France about 1115. He studied theology in Paris, but there is no proof that he was a pupil of Abelard. Returning to Italy he became a canon regular. ”

“ Rather one is pushed from behind and drawn from in front to an ever unreachable goal. One never finishes his Italian travels. Once the habit is formed, it becomes a disease. We care not that Cimabue is no longer considered to be throned the painter of the celebrated Madonna in Santa Maria Novella, or that Andrea del Sarto and his wife are no longer Andrea del Sarto and his wife, so long as we can weave together a fabric which pleases us, regardless of the new criticism,—or the old, for that matter. ”

“ From Languedoc to Venice and Florence they were enduring the bitterest persecution from their superiors; they were cast into dungeons where they starved to death, and were exposed to the infinite trials for which monastic life afforded such abundant opportunities, when Arnaldo persuaded Clement to make an energetic effort to heal the schism in the Order and to silence the accusations which the Conventuals brought against their brethren. ”