Note 28 — Chapter I

The two porphyry columns, that stand one on each side of Ghiberti’s Old Testament gates at the eastern door of the Baptistry of Florence, serve to point a moral about the untrustworthiness of popular sayings. When these apply to monuments it usually happens that the monument itself hopelessly discredits the saying. The porphyry columns in question are perfectly normal in colour and show no recognizable trace of the action of fire. Villani (Chronicle, bk. IV, ch. 31) says of these columns ‘The Pisani sent them to Florence covered with scarlet cloth, and some said that before they sent them they put them in the fire for envy.’ If we rationalize a little we can imagine that the scarlet cloth, the use of which by the Pisans in connection with porphyry shows a most lamentable absence of taste in colour, would at first sight seem to take the colour out of the porphyry and make it look grey through contrast. Hence may have arisen the impression which gave rise to the saying. Boccaccio, in his commentary on the passage in Dante (Inferno, XV, 67), in which the ‘blindness’ of the Florentines is referred to, notices this affair of the columns as one explanation of this accusation against his countrymen.