Note 105 — Chapter I

Or San Michele, as every visitor to Florence knows, is the church occupying the lower story of a lofty building in the Via Calzaiuoli. Constructively speaking the upper part is supported on the ground story by piers between which are round headed arches, three on the north and south sides and two on the east and west. The heads of these are in every case filled with florid late Gothic tracery with intersecting arches and rich cusping, and on all sides but the west the openings below the heads are walled in. On the west the arches contain the doorways of entrance, and the tracery above the doors, about which Vasari is writing, is richer than on the other sides of the building. It is curious to find Vasari calling this work ‘truly admirable,’ whereas a page or two later we shall find him inveighing against the ‘Goths’ (the mediaeval builders) and all their works and ways.