Note 18 — Chapter I

Fig. 1 shows the inscription of which Vasari writes and the situation of it on the riser of the step is seen on Plate II. The porphyry slab is 3 ft. 5 in. long and 5½ in. high. The tongues at the ends are in separate pieces. The letters, nineteen not eighteen in number, are close upon 2 in. in height and are cleanly cut with V-shaped incisions. The illustration shows the form of the letters which Vasari justly praises. The name ‘Oricellario’ or -us was derived by the distinguished Florentine family that bore it from the plant Oricello, orchil, which was employed for making a beautiful purple dye, from the importation of which from the Levant the family gained wealth and importance. The shortened popular form of the name ‘Rucellai’ is that by which the family is familiarly known. Giovanni Rucellai gave a commission to Alberti to complete the façade of S. Maria Novella, which was carried out by 1470. The Bernardo Rucellai of the inscription, the son of Giovanni, was known as a historian, and owned the gardens where the Platonic Academy had at one time its place of meeting. Fineschi, in his Forestiero Istruito in S. Maria Novella, Firenze, 1790, says that Bernardo desired to be buried in front of the church and had the inscription cut for sepulchral purposes. The existence of sepulchral ‘avelli’ of distinguished Florentine families at the front of the church makes this seem likely, and in this case the lettering would be after Alberti’s time, though as Fineschi believes, the earliest existing work of the kind in hard stone at Florence. See Rev. J. Wood Brown, S. Maria Novella, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 114.