Volume 7 — Glimpses Of Tuscany. Santa Maria Del Fiore—The Duomo.

I.

We are approaching Florence by rail from Pisa, a dismal, dripping February morning. It is twelve years since I first saw that famous Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore. I came suddenly upon it, as I was trying to find my way alone to the opera at the Pergola, the first night I got to Florence. I shall never forget the impression it made on me—an honest, original impression, for I had never read or heard of the Piazza and its wonders. I only knew Giotto by his "O." Orgagna, Arnolfo, Brunelleschi, were names utterly unknown. But the beauty and immensity of that mighty square, asleep in the starlight, overwhelmed me. It was like a step, unawares, from time into eternity. No Pergola that night for me. I crept back to the hotel, bewildered and awed into something like earnestness; for the Lord seemed enthroned in that consecrated place, and I was afraid of him as he sat there, stern, conscious, omnipotent.

But I was younger then; disposed to go into raptures over everything artistic, especially Italian art. The decade between thirty and forty diminishes one's enthusiasm dreadfully. I am almost afraid to meet my old favorite now, lest the spell of a fine remembrance should be broken for ever. But the train is rushing on, the road curves, and there's the same Duomo, looking as if Our Lady of Flowers herself had settled down on the city, with Giotto's campanile, like an archangel, standing guard beside her. There she sits in her gray mantle, grayer through the mist and snow, queen of all the landscape—grander, lighter, lovelier than ever.

Here we are at the station, and now driving past the baptistery; but, far or near, that cupola ever full in view like a guardian presence. You do not wonder here, as before Saint Peter's, what has become of the cupola; you are not obliged to fall back a league to see what is nearly overhead. Nave, transept, and tribune go swelling up, with buttress and demi-cupola diminishing as they ascend, and all converging into one enormous drum from which springs the central dome. Dante could see it from his chair in its very shadow. Arnolfo and Brunelleschi may see it from their seats of marble scarce twenty yards from the foundation-stone. Angelo may see it from his home in Santa Croce. The masons of Fiesole can see it from their hills, the peasants of San Casciano from their vineyards; and, far down the Arno, the boatmen from Pisa look up to it as they plod wearily along.

I am domesticated in Florence; the slow Tuscan spring is passing into summer; and, from being simply a joy, this great cathedral has become a study. Arnolfo, son of Lapo, or Cambio, was the great stone-poet who traced that ground-plan, itself an epic. He was commissioned by those wonderful republicans to construct a church, as worthy as man could make it of the glory of God and the dignity of the city of Florence. The inclination of Arnolfo's genius was toward the Gothic; but he was a many-sided and myriad-minded man. His walls of Florence suggest the Egyptian, his court of the Bargello the Saracenic, his Palazzo Vecchio a perfectly new idea. He has all the versatility of Shakespeare. Arnolfo's first conception of Santa Maria del Fiore may still be seen in fresco, copied from the last wooden model, in the Spanish Cloister of Santa Maria Novella. Up to the first cornice, the cathedral, as it now stands, is almost as purely Gothic as the campanile; and, by reference to the fresco, you will perceive that Arnolfo's original idea was to carry this Gothic treatment up to the very cross that crowns the lantern. For instance, the lantern in the fresco is without either ball or scroll, the clerestory buttressed, and with pointed instead of circular lights, the windows of the cupola pointed. Yet, as it is certain that Arnolfo lived to finish the clerestory, and to unite (serrare) the smaller cupolas and tribunes, it is clear these variations in his plan, these departures from the pointed, these approximations to the round, were deliberately made by Arnolfo himself, or by his direction. As the work advanced, he felt that something more must be conceded to the coming cupola. It was not enough to have it octagonal instead of spherical, and enrich its eight marble ribs with Gothic tracery; the antagonism between the two styles must be met and softened from the start. See how gradually this is done, and at what an early stage these concessions begin. In the fresco, the blind arches, both over the lower tribunal windows and just under the lower tribunal cornice, are slightly pointed; in the building itself they are round; the niches above the cornice, also, are pointed in the picture and round-topped in the stone. 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.

There they are, seated side by side in marble, close to the stone that marks where Dante, too, sat gazing at their Duomo. Arnolfo looks more like a dreamer than a doer, although he was both; in Ser Brunelleschi's face there is more of the mathematician than the poet. He could never have traced that ground-plan, never have dreamed that shining archangel called the campanile; but he did what neither the pupil of Cimabue nor the son of Cambio could perhaps have managed as well, he built that matchless cupola. Brunelleschi had his one great dream, the solution of a vast and novel architectural difficulty. What Arnolfo had hinted became his grand ideal. He nursed his dream for years at Rome, communing with the spirit of classic art; at last he told his dream in Florence, and with infinite difficulty got leave to act it out. Since that noble carte blanche to Arnolfo, Florence had declined; she was no longer up to the proud standard of that earlier day. The superintendents are slippery and slow in engaging Filippo; and Filippo himself must finesse more than a little to secure the engagement. There is this difference, to be sure, that the Duomo was the culmination of Arnolfo's professional career and but the beginning of his successor's; that the latter, like all gallant adventurers, had to win his spurs before he could be fully trusted. Still, the two inseparable elements of self and gain are more conspicuous here than in the purer Christian ages, whose architects disdained or forbore to register their names; whose works preserve no personal memorial of their masters; "so that," says Vasari, "I cannot but marvel at the simplicity and indifference to glory exhibited by the men of that period." There is, unfortunately, no such simplicity to marvel at now.

As early as 1407, Filippo submitted an opinion to the superintendents of the works of Santa Maria del Fiore, and to the syndics of the guild of wool-workers, (powerful gentlemen in those days,) that the edifice above the roof must be constructed, not after the design of Arnolfo; but that a frieze, thirty feet high, must be erected with a large window in each of its sides. This suggestion, together with the additional thirty feet for the gallery, comprised the single, sublime conception to which the Duomo owes its crowning beauty; the rest of the task is chiefly mechanical. But such immense mechanics require immense genius. Filippo had supplied the idea, but there was no one found wise enough to execute it. The wardens and syndics were much perplexed; and Filippo, after laughing at them in his sleeve, returned to Rome. He had hardly gone before they wrote him to return. He came; and after patiently listening to the long array of difficulties which mediocrity always opposes to the inspiration of genius, admitted that the most enormous dome of ancient or modern times must present certain difficulties in its erection, like other great enterprises; that he was confounded no less by the breadth than by the height of the edifice; that if the tribune could be vaulted in a circular form, one might pursue the method adopted by the Romans in erecting the Pantheon; but that following up the eight sides of the building to a convergence, thus dove-tailing, and, so to speak, enchaining the stones, would be a most difficult and novel undertaking. "Yet"—and this touch is worthy of Arnolfo's age or any other—"yet, remembering that this is a temple consecrated to God and the Virgin, I confidently trust that, for a work executed in their honor, they will not fail to infuse knowledge where it is now wanting, and bestow strength, wisdom, and genius on him who shall be the author of such a project." Nothing can shake Filippo's joyous trust in himself; he acts as if he carries a divine commission in his pocket to finish what Arnolfo began, and can therefore afford to laugh at all human appointments or interference. With amazing confidence and magnanimity, he concludes his interview with their worships by exhorting them to assemble, on a fixed day within a year, as many architects as they can get together; not Tuscans and Italians only, but Germans, French, and all other nations, "to the end that the work may be commenced and intrusted to him who shall give the best evidence of capacity." The syndics and wardens liked Filippo's advice, and would also have liked him to prepare a model for their edification. But with all his piety and self-reliance, Ser Brunelleschi was a Florentine like their worships, and therefore keen enough to keep his model to himself. It then suddenly occurred to these grave gentlemen that money might be an object to Filippo, as it occasionally is to other men; and so they voted him a sum, not stated by Vasari, but not large enough to justify his remaining in Florence. So back to Rome once more marches the Ser Brunelleschi.

Meanwhile that noble city of Florence has ordered her merchants resident abroad to send her at any cost the best foreign masters. In the year 1420, these best foreign masters, and best Italian masters besides, and the syndics and superintendents, and a select number of distinguished citizens, and little Filippo himself, just returned from Rome, are all assembled in the hall of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore. After listening to a hundred absurd plans, Brunelleschi unfolds his own at full length. Whereupon the assembled syndics, superintendents, and citizens, instead of being at all edified by his remarks, proceeded to call him a simpleton, an ass, a madman, and bade him discourse of something else. Which he, instead of doing, stuck to his point, and finally lost his temper and flew in their faces. Whereupon they called him a fool and a babbler; and considering him absolutely mad, arose against him as one man, and incontinently turned him out of doors by the head and heels. Imagine the rage of Arnolfo the Goth, after such treatment; or Angelo the mighty, stalking down the Via Romana; or Dante, wandering ghost-like into eternal exile! The indomitable, practical Filippo did none of these things, but prudently shut himself up at home lest people in the streets should call out, "See where goes that fool!" "It was not the fault of these men," says the sympathetic Vasari, "that Filippo did not break in pieces the models, set fire to the designs, and in one half-hour destroy all the labors so long endured, and ruin the hopes of so many years." But Filippo was less a poet, enamoured of an inward vision of beauty, than an architect determined to solve an architectural problem. 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. Instead of fretting himself to death or cultivating the princely revenge of silence, Filippo, strong in his mission and calculating on the proverbial caprice of his native Florence, began to experiment on individuals instead of assemblies; so successfully, too, that another session was soon convened. Profiting by discomfiture, Filippo modified his tactics. He salutes the superintendents as "magnificent signors and wardens," and condescends to be more explicit about his still hidden model. He even goes so far as to prove the dome-within-a-dome, which had so enraged their excellencies, a possibility. He spoke with such emphasis and confidence, that "he had all the appearance of having vaulted ten such cupolas." In a word, they surrendered at discretion; and, rather in despair than hope, made him principal master of the works. The man of talents was victorious where a mere man of genius would have been badly beaten. But—in these artistic complications there is always a but—Lorenzo Ghiberti, just famous for his doors of Paradise, was a favorite in Florence; so Florence resolved to associate Lorenzo with Filippo. This was a bitter pill to Ser Brunelleschi, but he swallowed it; and for two years they worked together at the twelve braccia to which their labors were limited by the wardens. But—there was also a 'but' on the right side—when the closing in of the cupola toward the top commenced, and the masons and other masters were wailing in expectation of directions as to the manner in which the chains were to be applied and the scaffoldings erected, it chanced on one fine morning that Filippo did not appear at the works. On inquiry, it turned out that he had tied up his head, called for hot plates and towels, and gone to bed complaining bitterly. An attack of pleurisy. Most inopportunely; for at this most critical moment in the enterprise the whole burthen fell on Lorenzo. Lorenzo was besieged by practical questions; Lorenzo was persecuted with a thousand interrogatories; Lorenzo waded completely out of his depth into a sea of troubles; the masons and stone-cutters came to a stand, and finally the work stood still. At this juncture, the syndics and wardens resolved to pay the sick man a visit. They condoled with him in his illness and also lamented the disorder which had attacked the building. "Is not Lorenzo there?" asked the sufferer. "He will not do anything without you," replied the wardens. "But I could do well enough without him," murmured the invalid. The wardens withdrew, and sent Filippo a prescription in the shape of an announcement of their intention to remove Lorenzo. Filippo instantly recovered, but only to find his rival still in place and power. Whereupon he made one more prayer to their worships, namely, to divide the labor as they divided the salary, and give each his own separate sphere of action. This was granted: the chain-work assigned to Lorenzo, the scaffolding to Filippo. The scaffolding proved a miracle of success, the chain-work a monument of failure. The wardens, and syndics, and superintendents, and influential citizens, fairly driven to the wall, made Filippo chief superintendent of the whole fabric for life, commanding that nothing should be done in the work save by his direction. How much richer the world would now be in every department of art, had half its men of genius but possessed a tithe of Brunelleschi's elasticity and determination.

Left to himself, Filippo worked with so much zeal and minute attention, that not a stone was placed in the building which he had not examined. The very bricks, fresh from the oven, are said to have been set apart with his own hands. So conscientious were the builders of those days when art was supreme and religion a practical inspiration. The energy and resources of this model architect are inexhaustible. Nothing escapes him. Outlets and apertures are provided, both in security against the force of the winds, and against the vapors and vibrations of the earth. Wine-shops and eating-houses are opened in the cupola. High over Florence, Filippo is undisputed lord and master of a small town of his own.

And so, for twenty-six years, they wrought under his eyes at this architectural miracle. He lived to see the lantern carried to the height of several braccia: it was not finished till fifteen years after his death. He left plans for the gallery, which were either lost, stolen, or destroyed. That great, broad belt of dingy brick and mortar clamoring to earth and heaven for completion, ruins the effect of the dome and gives the whole edifice a shabby appearance. Only one of the eight sides is finished. This was done in Carrara marble by Baccio d'Agnolo, and would have been carried all around the dome but for the interference of Michael Angelo, then omnipotent in Italy, who denounced it as a mere cage for crickets; adding that he himself would show Baccio what he ought to do. The old art-dictator made a model accordingly, which, after long debate, was rejected. So our Lady of Flowers still lacks her girdle. It is much to be regretted, since Michael could suggest nothing better, that he did not hold his peace. The present model may not be faultless, but it is infinitely better than nothing; and no one else has suggested anything as good. It was condemned, not as defective in itself, but unequal to the magnificence of the building; and, also, because it seemed to violate some secret purpose of Brunelleschi's in cutting off, as it did, the line of stones which he had left projecting. Be this as it may, Filippo's purpose has never been divined and never can be; all the plans of the great masters are lost; and there seems to be small use in continuing the interdict of a much over-estimated authority till doomsday. That cestus of alternate head and garland just under the colonnade is abominable, but it is difficult to see how the present design could otherwise be improved. It harmonizes with all the windows, and niches, and arches in the tribune; it relieves the blankness of the perforations, and is in sympathy both with the windows of the lantern and the upper window of the campanile. It is the sub-dominant without which the blended Gothic and classic is a discord. Arnolfo might have done it better, but no one else. It is a poem which Baccio was as well qualified to trace as any of the rest of them.

Apart from his glorious consummation of the Duomo, I do not like Brunelleschi. He did more than any other man to repel the Gothic influences, which, under Arnolfo and others, were penetrating Tuscany; he insured the triumph of the round arch over the pointed, and paved the way to the monstrosities of the Renaissance. But his cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore is the supreme miracle of architecture. It exceeds the cupola of the Vatican, both in height and circumference, by eight feet; and although supported by eight ribs only, which renders it lighter than that of Saint Peter's, which has sixteen flanked buttresses, is nevertheless more solid and firm. Unlike the Roman dome, it has stood unassisted and unstrengthened from the first; so firmly grounded by the forethought of Arnolfo, so closely knit by the energies of Filippo, that it has not sunk or swerved an inch in four centuries. The noblest speech that Buonarotti ever made was, that he would not copy, but could not surpass it; the finest compliment ever paid by one man of genius to another was his dying wish to be buried where he might arise, not in sight of his own Pantheon in the air, but in full view of the vaulted tribune of Santa Maria del Fiore. Another name, however, is associated with the growth of the Duomo—a name not inferior to either Arnolfo or Filippo. Just beside the vast cathedral is the wondrous bell-tower Giotto reared—his solitary, or only conspicuous architectural feat. Before Giotto's time, the modern painters copied nature about as closely as most actors and orators now do; that is, their men and women bore only a weak, conventional resemblance to humanity. The son of Bondone inaugurated the naturalistic movement which culminated in Da Vinci and Raphael; unquestionably a most honorable distinction. But what can all he ever painted, judged as a living fact, amount to when weighed against the startling splendor of this divine campanile? I have seen something of Giotto, far from all, but enough to know that, save as undeveloped germs and hints, his pictures are little more than crudities belonging to the infancy of art, amazing at his time, but not more than curious at ours. But this campanile, into which he suddenly ascended without an effort, is the transfiguration of architecture—the product of an art at its best and highest. Architecture never had advanced, never has advanced a step beyond it. It might be added, never can advance; for beyond a certain recognized point in the realization of beauty, human genius is not permitted to push its way. Vasari devotes thirty pages to the consideration of Giotto's pictures, and but one to the campanile. Yet these pictures are mouldering in convents or shrouded in chapels, or buried in dim galleries, scattered far and wide over the world; and, save over some ambitious student or patient virtuoso, they no longer exist as a spell or a power. But this lofty campanile is a perpetual influence; an influence as indestructible as the Iliad—a joy as unceasing as the joy of sunrise—the joy of a work that is perfection of its kind. So fair, so frail, and yet so firm! It does not need the glass case suggested by imperial condescension. It knows how to take the lightning and the storm. It knows how to bear the weight and thunder of its mellow bells. Its beautiful head is at home in the skies, and seems to belong to heaven as much as the flowers belong to earth.

Giotto's plan would have crowned it with a spire of a hundred feet; but, whether for true artistic considerations, or because it was Gothic, or because it was too expensive, succeeding architects have always advised its omission.

Besides its own independent loveliness, this bell-tower exercises an important influence over the group to which it belongs, not only by the development of form, but also by the subtler qualification of style. 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.

The facade of Santa Maria is wanting, like her girdle. Giotto is said to have finished two thirds of it, subsequently torn down to be restored in a more modern style! The fresco in the cloister of San Marco gives only part of it, and I could make but little of that. As I remember the fresco of Arnolfo's facade, it was meant to be composed of statues, niches, and pillars—something as deep and rich as the façade at Pisa. Whoever may finish it, let us trust that the shallow mosaic of Santa Croce will be avoided. The baptistery completes this memorable group; faded, unattractive without, sombre and majestic within.

The interior of Santa Maria is a disappointment. Glorious stained glass, splendid arches, but none of the light, the joy, the shining paradise of Saint Peter's. If we may believe Vasari, the interior, like the exterior was to have been crusted with Florentine mosaic, even to the minutest corners of the edifice. But the days are dead when such a deed was practicable. Instead of colored marbles, we have a pale olive overspreading all the edifice; instead of the mosaic for which Filippo had provided iron supports, the lack-lustre frescoes of Vasari and his successors, which Florence ought to have summarily whitewashed, as suggested in Lasca's madrigal. Fortunately, these frescoes are the only pictures. Pictures in large churches are distracting and insignificant; and moreover, you can rarely more than half see them, try your best. Least of all, has a picture any business in a Gothic church. For my own part I would as soon see the pyramid of Cheops hung with pictures as the Duomo. In a church, you want all the superhuman you can get—nothing human but human souls. Angels and dragons and effigies are more in keeping there than the best statues; those ghostly groups and faces in the old stained glass look better than if they were a thousand times more natural. The old mosaics harmonize because they are not only typical, but imperishable as the structure itself. The decisive objection to a picture in a church is its apparent fragility.

The outer robes of our Lady of Flowers are dull with the dust and wear of five centuries. See how those new bits of marble which the workmen are inserting, green, white, and red, flash and sparkle in the sun! What a celestial vision it must have been when all that world of mosaic was fresh and stainless! But even as she is, faded and unfinished, what an invaluable possession! What would Florence be without it? It is a central magnet that holds together her present, past, and future; that unites all her children in one vast family, making her, in the truest sense of the word, a community. It stands before her everlastingly, a memorial of her youthful wealth and power; a monument of present greatness, a protest against decrepitude to come. It binds her fast to her renown, her honor, and her faith; it is the solemn, visible bond between her and God. The Duomo belongs not only to Florence, but to all the hills and valleys around, to the villas of Morello, to the cloisters of Fiesole, to the huts on the Apennines. Every peasant within sight of its cupola, within sound of its campanile, has a share in its daily benediction. For four centuries, the generations that people that fair amphitheatre have found it the most unchanging feature in their landscape. It is as much the portion of their lives as the stars, their river, or their own vineyards. In the first blush of every morning, it rises before the sun; and when the stars and moon are shining, the lantern of Santa Maria del Fiore takes its place amongst them as part of the pageantry of the skies.