Florence: Art of the Duomo

In his tour of Florence's Duomo, Edward Hutton paid tribute to Brunelleschi's dome, and to an often overlooked sculpture of the Madonna and St. Thomas on the facade of the church.

 

Above, the dome soars into heaven; that mighty dome, higher than St. Peter’s, the despair of Michelangelo, one of the beauties of the world. One wanders about the church looking at the bronze doors of the Segrestia Nuova, or the terra-cottas of Luca della Robbia, always to return to that miracle of Brunellesco’s. Not far away in the south aisle you come upon his monument with his portrait in marble by Buggiano. The indomitable persistence of the face! Is it any wonder that, impossible as his dream appeared, he had his way with Florence at last—yes, and with himself too? As you stand at the corner of Via del Proconsolo, and, looking upward, see that immense dome soaring into the sky over that church of marble, something of the joy and confidence and beauty that were immortal in him came come to you too from his work. Like Columbus, he conquered a New World. His schemes, which the best architects in Europe laughed at, were treated with scorn by the Consiglio, yet he persuaded them at last…. In 1421 he won over the Consiglio. He began at once. What his agonies may have been, what profound difficulties he discovered and conquered, we do not know, but by 1434, when Eugenius IV was in Florence and the Duomo was consecrated, his dome was finished, wanting only the lantern and the ball. These he began in 1437, but died too soon to see, for the lantern was not finished till 1458, and it was only in 1471 that Verrocchio cast the bronze ball.

 

The Facade:

It is not, however, in such merely competent work as this that we shall find ourselves interested, but rather in the beautiful door on the north, just before the transept, over which, in an almond-shaped glory, Madonna gives her girdle to St. Thomas. Given now to Nanni di Banco, a sculptor of the end of the fourteenth century, whom Vasari tells us was the pupil of Donatello, it long passed as the work of Jacopo della Quercia. Certainly one of the loveliest works of the early Renaissance, it is full of life and gracious movement, so natural and so noble, that everything else in the Cathedral, save the work of Donatello, is forgotten beside it. Madonna enthroned among the cherubim in her oval mandorla, upheld by four puissant fair angels, turns with a gesture most natural and lovely to St. Thomas, who kneels to her, his drapery in beautiful folds about him, lifting his hands in prayer. Above, three angels play on pipes and reeds; while in a corner a great bear gnaws at the bark of an oak in full leaf. 

 

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Edward Hutton: Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa, second edition, London, 1908. Pp. 178-180.