A Wanderer in Florence | Page 3

the southern
sky; outside, too, one's ears were filled with all the shattering noises in
which Florence is an adept; and then, one step, and behold nothing but
vast and silent gloom. This surprise is the more emphatic if one
happens already to have been in the Baptistery. 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. And mere size with a dim light and a savour of
incense is enough: it carries religion. No need for masses and chants or
any ceremony whatever: the world is shut out, one is on terms with the
infinite. A forest exercises the same spell; among mountains one feels it;
but in such a cathedral as the Duomo one feels it perhaps most of all,
for it is the work of man, yet touched with mystery and wonder, and the
knowledge that man is the author of such a marvel adds to its greatness.

The interior is so dim and strange as to be for a time sheer terra
incognita, and to see a bat flitting from side to side, as I have often
done even in the morning, is to receive no shock. In such a twilight
land there must naturally be bats, one thinks. The darkness is due not to
lack of windows but to time. The windows are there, but they have
become opaque. None of the coloured ones in the aisle allows more
than a filtration of light through it; there are only the plain, circular
ones high up and those rich, coloured, circular ones under the dome to
do the work. In a little while, however, one's eyes not only become
accustomed to the twilight but are very grateful for it; and beginning to
look inquiringly about, as they ever do in this city of beauty, they
observe, just inside, an instant reminder of the antiseptic qualities of
Italy. For by the first great pillar stands a receptacle for holy water,
with a pretty and charming angelic figure upon it, which from its air of
newness you would think was a recent gift to the cathedral by a grateful
Florentine. 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. Then in 1182 the cathedral was transferred to S.
Reparata, which stood on part of the site of the Duomo, and in 1294 the
decision to rebuild S. Reparata magnificently was arrived at, and
Arnolfo di Cambio was instructed to draw up plans. Arnolfo, whom we
see not only on a tablet in the left aisle, in relief, with his plan, but also
more than life size, seated beside Brunelleschi on the Palazzo de'
Canonici on the south side of the cathedral, facing the door, was then
sixty-two and an architect of great reputation. Born in 1232, he had
studied under Niccolo Pisano, the sculptor of the famous pulpit at Pisa
(now in the museum there), of that in the cathedral in Siena, and of the
fountain at Perugia (in all of which Arnolfo probably helped), and the
designer of many buildings all over Italy. Arnolfo's own unaided

sculpture may be seen at its best in the ciborium in S. Paolo Fuori le
Mura in Rome; but it is chiefly as an architect that he is now known.
He had already given Florence her extended walls and some of her
most beautiful buildings--the Or San Michele and the Badia--and
simultaneously he designed S. Croce and the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari
has it that Arnolfo was assisted on the Duomo by Cimabue; but that is
doubtful.
The foundations were consecrated in 1296 and the first stone laid on
September 8th, 1298, and no one was more interested in its early
progress than a young, grave lawyer who used to sit on a