Duomo di Firenze

“ He now designed and speedily began the construction of the most exquisite building of modern times, the one in which the quality of classic art is most completely and beautifully harmonized with the spirit and fancy of modern times. The unsurpassed bell-tower of the Duomo, known and admired by all men as the Campanile of Giotto, is the most splendid memorial of the arts of Florence. ”

“ It is six hundred years old and perhaps was designed by Giotto himself.
The emptiness of the Duomo is another of its charms. Nothing is allowed to impair the vista as you stand by the western entrance: the floor has no chairs; the great columns rise from it in the gloom as if they, too, were rooted. The walls, too, are bare, save for a few tablets.
The history of the building is briefly this. The first cathedral of Florence was the Baptistery, and S. John the Baptist is still the patron saint of the city. ”

“ For the Baptistery is also coloured marble without, yet within it is coloured marble and mosaic too: there is no disparity; whereas in the Duomo the walls have a Northern grey and the columns are brown. Austerity and immensity join forces.
When all is said the chief merit of the Duomo is this immensity. Such works of art as it has are not very noticeable, or at any rate do not insist upon being seen; but in its vastness it overpowers. Great as are some of the churches of Florence, I suppose three or four of them could be packed within this one. ”

“ Hundreds and thousands of people came to the Opera, looked at the designs, signed their names on the list of approval, for one or the other.
After the joint reign as capi maestri of Giovanni di Lapo Ghino and Francesco Talenti, came a varied line of master builders lasting for a hundred years, so that it is impossible to say that any one man was the architect of the Duomo. Between Arnolfo's first plan and the final Italian Gothic development of the fifteenth century lies the whole history of the development of art. ”

“ It is when seen from a distance that the full worth and power of the great Cathedral force themselves upon the beholder. Looking down upon Florence from one of the neighboring heights, the beautiful city seems to lie gathered under the shelter of its mighty Duomo. ”

“ I have looked at the wonderful Duomo. This cathedral! After all, the elaborate grace of the Pisan cathedral is one thing, and the massive grandeur of this of Florence is another and better thing; it struck me with a sense of the sublime in architecture. At Pisa we say, 'How beautiful!' here we say nothing; it is enough if we can breathe. The mountainous marble masses overcome as we look up—we feel the weight of them on the soul. ”

“ FIG. 150.—INTERIOR OF SIENNA CATHEDRAL.
The failure to produce adequate results of scale in the interiors of the larger Italian churches, has been already alluded to. It is strikingly exemplified in the Duomo at Florence, the nave of which is 72 feet wide, with four pier-arches 259 each over 55 feet in span. The immense vault, in square bays, starts from the level of the tops of these arches. The interior (Fig. 148) is singularly naked and cold, giving no conception of its vast dimensions. The colossal dome is an early work of the Renaissance (see p. 276) . ”

“ From the centre of this glory stand out in bold relief old bastions built upon the solid tufa, vast gaping gateways black in shadow, towers of churches shooting up above a medley of deep-corniced tall Italian houses, and, amid them all, the marble front of the Cathedral, calm and solemn in its unfamiliar Gothic state. Down to the valley from these heights there is a sudden fall; and we wonder how the few spare olive-trees that grow there can support existence on the steep slope of the cliff.
The great Duomo was erected at the end of the Thirteenth Century to commemorate the Miracle of Bolsena. ”

“ This church and monastery belong to the earlier German period of Italy, if such a thing as Italian Gothic can be said to have ever existed. The truth is, that with the exception of Milan cathedral, which is modern, exotic, and exceptional, the German, or, to use the common and senseless expression, the Gothic system of architecture never fairly took root in Italy. Certainly, the pointed windows and arches of the Florence duomo and its campanile do not constitute it a Gothic church. ”

“ A new prophet had arisen, and, from the pulpits of San Marco and Santa Maria del Fiore, the stern Dominican, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, denounced the corruption of the day and announced that speedy judgment was at hand; the Church should be chastised, and that speedily, and renovation should follow. Prodigies were seen. The lions tore and rent each other in their cages; lightning struck the cupola of the Duomo on the side towards the Medicean palace; while in his villa at Careggi the Magnifico lay dying, watched over by his sister Bianca and the poet Poliziano. ”

“ Eventually it was transferred to the cathedral, where it is kept in a chest sculptured by Giovanni Pisano, and the keys thereof jealously guarded by the Bishop of the Diocese and worshipful Syndic of the City of Prato. The people hold the relic in the profoundest reverence; five times during the year it is, with great ceremony, publicly exhibited, until about the tradition has gathered a religious cult, to which many of the noblest works of art in the Duomo directly refer. ”

“ The Florentine Cathedral has a spacious and lofty nave, and side aisles divided from it by pillars; but there are no chapels along the aisles, so that there is far more breadth and freedom of interior, in proportion to the actual space, than is usual in churches. It is woful to think how the vast capaciousness within St. Peter's is thrown away, and made to seem smaller than it is by every possible device, as if on purpose. The pillars and walls of this Duomo are of a uniform brownish, neutral tint; the pavement, a mosaic work of marble ”

“ The four side gates of the Duomo are among the chief artistic monuments of Florentine sculpture in the epoch that intervened between the setting of Andrea Pisano and Orcagna, and the rising of Donatello and Ghiberti. Nearer the façade, south and north, the two plainer and earlier portals are always closed; the two more ornate and later, the gate of the canons on the south and the gate of the Mandorla on the north, are the ordinary entrances into the aisles of the cathedral. ”

“ Duomo and campanile make as fair a couple as ever builders brought together: the immense comfortable church so solidly set upon the earth, and at its side this delicate, slender marble creature, all gaiety and lightness, which as surely springs from roots within the earth. For one cannot be long in Florence, looking at this tower every day and many times a day, both from near and far, without being perfectly certain that it grows—and from a bulb, I think—and was never really built at all, whatever the records may aver. ”

“ The candle, in an ancient copper porta fuoco surmounted by a dove, was then lighted, and the procession of priests started off for the cathedral with their precious flame, escorted by a civic guard and various standard bearers. Their route was the Piazza del Limbo, along the Borgo SS. Apostoli to the Via Por S. Maria and through the Vacchereccia to the Piazza della Signoria, the Via Condotta, the Via del Proconsolo, to the Duomo, through whose central doors they passed, depositing the sacred burden at the high altar. ”

“ The town is commanded by a castle which hath four bastions and a garrison of soldiers. Near it is a list to ride horses in, much frequented by the gallants in summer.
Not far from hence is the Church and Convent of the Dominicans, where in the chapel of St. Catherine of Sienna they show her head, the rest of her body being translated to Rome. The Duomo, or Cathedral, both without and within, is of large square stones of black and white marble polished, of inexpressible beauty, as is the front adorned with sculpture and rare statues. ”

“ The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It is eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high commercial prosperity and the political importance that made it a necessity, or rather a possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and ruin, it conveys to us a more tangible impression of the former greatness of Pisa than books could give us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. ”

“ Every step we take we encounter some sign of this persistency or precocity of a Latin and classic spirit. Facing the Duomo is the baptistery, which at first served as a church, a sort of octagonal temple surmounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model of the Pantheon of Rome, and which, according to the testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the eighth century projected upward the pompous rotundities of its imperial forms. ”

“ There is a fine court, surrounded with sarcophagi and statues, including some of the old tombs which stood round the Baptistery and among which Guido Cavalcanti used to linger, and some statues of Apostles from the second façade of the Duomo. Above the arcades are eight fine classical medallions by Donatello, copied and enlarged from antique gems. The rooms above have been entirely altered since the days when Capponi defied King Charles, and Madonna Clarice taunted Alessandro and Ippolito ”

“ Strangers thus coming were received with brotherly charity, and the duties of Christian hospitality were observed. Even in winter, the people of Florence rose from their beds after midnight, in order to reach the Duomo in time to secure a place, and then waited in church, taper in hand, praying, singing hymns, or reciting the office, for hours together. The cathedral could not contain his audience. Seats were put up in an amphitheatre to increase the space. Men and boys swarmed on the pillars and every point where it was possible to obtain a position. ”

“ Look at the grand Duomo of Florence—a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but when the filthy beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive, and I said, “O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”
Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral. ”

“ The Duomo of Milan is like no other building in the world, it belongs to no distinct style of architecture, and in art it had neither parents nor children. Nothing was ever built like it before, and nothing will ever be built like it again. We do not say that it is the most beautiful church ever built, nor do we deny that, architecturally speaking, it possesses many grave faults, but what we mean is this: Of all other churches we say they are built in such and such a style, or are of such and such an order of architecture. But of this we say simply, it is the Duomo of Milan. ”

“ To enter Pisa by the Porta Nuova, coming at once into the Piazza del Duomo, is as though at midday, on the highway, one had turned aside into a secret meadow full of a strange silence and dazzling light, where have been abandoned among the wild flowers the statues of the gods. For the Piazza is just that—a meadow scattered with daisies, among which, as though forgotten, stand unbroken a Cathedral, a Baptistery, a Tower, and a Cemetery, all of marble, separate and yet one in the consummate beauty of their grouping. ”

“ There is, as far as I know, only one Gothic building in Europe, the Duomo of Florence, in which, though the ornament be of a much earlier school, it is yet so exquisitely finished as to enable us to imagine what might have been the effect of the perfect workmanship of the Renaissance, coming out of the hands of men like Verrocchio and Ghiberti, had it been employed on the magnificent framework of Gothic 14 structure. ”

“ The young hero has just caught sight of the approaching enemy, and is all braced up for the immortal moment. Commenced in 1501 and finished at the beginning of 1504, out of a block of marble over which an earlier sculptor had bungled, it was originally set up in front of the Palazzo Vecchio on the Ringhiera, as though to defend the great Palace of the People. It is supposed to have taken five days to move the statue from the Opera del Duomo, where Michelangelo had chiselled it out, to the Palace. ”

“ But after the second rebuilding of Florence, in the year of Christ 1150, the cupola was built upon columns, and the ball, and the golden cross which is at the top, by the consuls of the Art of Calimala, to which the commonwealth of Florence had committed the charge of the building of the said work in honour of S. John. And by many people which have journeyed through the world it is said to be the most beautiful temple or duomo of any that may be found ”

“ Mark's in Venice, the Duomo at Parma, and the Four Fabrics at Pisa, there is a church more worthy to be seen for its quaint, rich architecture, than the Cathedral at Ferrara. It is of that beloved Gothic of which eye or soul cannot weary, and we continually wandered back to it from other more properly interesting objects. ”

“ The view from the Franciscan convent upon the brow of the hill, site of the ancient acropolis, is on the whole the very best which can be obtained of Florence and the Val d' Arno. All the verdurous, gently rolling hills which are heaped about Firenze la bella are visible at once. There, stretched languidly upon those piles of velvet cushions, reposes the luxurious, jewelled, tiara-crowned city, like Cleopatra on her couch. Nothing, save an Oriental or Italian city on the sea-coast, can present a more beautiful picture. ”