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The Cathedral Square, Florence (Piazza del Duomo)
 The cathedral square of Florence (Piazza del Duomo) stands almost in the very center of the city, and the Duomo itself-with its exotic, black-and-white-marble exterior, and its famous Ghiberti doors, which Michelangelo said were "fit to stand at the gates of Paradise" -is an important focal point of your touring activities. For one thing, the Academy Museum ("Accademia"), at the Piazza San Marco, is only a few short blocks away, and it's here you'lI find the original David by Michelangelo-which you can not, under any circumstances, fail to see. The north end of Via Calzaioli (street of the stocking-makers) opens on to the Piazza del Duomo, Ruskin's "history-haunted square," containing one of the most wonderful groups of buildings in the world, -- wonderful even in Italy, the land of beauty and of wonder. The group is composed of the Cathedral, the Campanile or belfry, and the Baptistery of Florence.
But before these great monuments are reached, two of the most interesting, characteristic, and ancient Florentine institutions, which should be noticed, are passed as the Via Calzaioli is left and the Piazza entered. These are the ArchConfraternity of the Brothers of Mercy, known as "The Misericordia," and the hospital of the Gallo Bianco, or White Cock, -- condensed into the short name of "Bigallo." The Bigallo is a hospital for the reception of orphans, and its little Loggia, by an unknown architect of the fourteenth century, is one of the most beautiful things in Florence. Behind the fine wrought-iron gates which open into Via Calzaioli is a small chapel enclosing a much venerated picture, admission to see which is very difficult, very rarely to be obtained, and then only as a great privilege.
The spirit of the Brothers of Mercy has spread to the small towns and villages in Tuscany, most of which possess some society of the sort; but should any desire to bring a sick person to one of the Florentine hospitals, they cannot carry him beyond the city gate, where the Florentine Brethren meet them and take charge of the sufferer. The Misericordia of Fiesole is, however, an exception to this rule, enjoying the high privilege of carrying their sick through Florence to the hospital door.
This wonderful Confraternity of Mercy had its origin in the simple piety of a poor street porter of Florence, one Pietro Borsi, in the year 1240. In those days the street porters were a very rough lot, and while waiting for jobs met in a low tavern near the Duomo, where they gambled and drank, uttering the vilest blasphemies, and wasting their hard-earned wages. Made miserable by the daily spectacle of their moral degradation, Pietro Borsi set about endeavouring to improve their condition. Winning a few to his side, he suggested
that a small fine should be imposed on those whose blasphemies so polluted the ears of their comrades. The scheme succeeded. The fines accumulated until there was collected quite a respectable sum of money, with which, at Pietro's suggestion, a litter was purchased, and the porters, in their spare hours, began to seek out and to carry the sick poor to the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
At first the litter was painted red, as were, later, when the Confraternity was organised, the habits of the Brethren; but by and by this was changed to black, -- the familiar black of to-day, with the curious pointed hood concealing the face from the patient lying inside the bed-like litter. Not only must the sick person remain in ignorance of the name and rank of the Brethren carrying him, but the latter are positively forbidden to accept any money whatever. All they may receive is a "cup of cold water."
From the King of Italy to the humblest citizen of Florence, gentle and simple, rich and poor alike, all are eligible for the Arch-Confraternity of Mercy, and cheerfully take their turn of duty, waiting at their Oratory for the summons which comes so often for their aid; but Brothers whose daily work for bread seriously interferes with their attendance pay a small sum of money instead.
The Arch-Confraternity keep the 20th of January -- their patron saint Sebastian's day -- as a great festival, in which the whole city participates; and very special cakes are sold all day long to the crowds who throng the little chapel, from stalls set up outside the Oratory, -- for does not every Florentine family give at least one of its members to the Arch-Confraternity of Mercy, which is so peculiarly their own, and is lived in their very lives?
The Oratory of the Confraternity of Mercy directly faces the celebrated Campanile of Florence, which has been described so often and by so many great writers and poets, but by none so sympathetically, or so appropriately, as by Ruskin. He calls it "that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea-shell." This description, fairylike in its similes, intangible and delicate, seems exactly to suit the "Shepherd's Tower." The beauty of it seems to sink into the very soul as day by day one learns to know it more, and to mark with ever-increasing delight the exquisite tracery of the windows, and their slender, twisted, supporting columns; the many-coloured marbles, running from purest white to crimson and green and onyx; the fine medallions of Luca above the solid base, and the perfect composition and proportion of his figures, so well placed in the limited spaces apportioned to them. Above these medallions stand serene and beautiful statues gazing upon the square with everlasting unseeing eyes, that could tell so much were it possible: and slowly, little by little, one learns to realise that each and every part of the perfect whole represents some of the greatest work of the master minds of that golden age in which the Tower was born. Giotto was the designer; Andrea Pisano, Francesco Talenti, Luca della Robbia, and Donatello the beautifiers, -- the men who carried on and completed the thought of the peasant genius in whose brain and heart the belfry lived long ere men saw and marvelled at its magic loveliness. The Campanile stands in this year of our Lord as it stood when completed in that far-off fourteenth century, to the genius of which Florence owes its conception and execution. Faithfully the bells call men daily to Mass and Vespers, and give the signal for the "Ave Maria" to all the other city towers thrice daily. Through the generations it fulfils its task in the pale dawn of winter, and in the blazing summer-noon, when the pavement burns beneath the hurrying feet of the people on the square, and the sky is like pitiless brass above their heads, and in the glowing crimson and gold and amethyst of an autumn sunset -- palpably linking the past ages with our Florence of today.
Hardly separated from the Campanile stands the beautiful Cathedral, dedicated to "Our Lady of the Flower," -- the "flower" being the lily on the city shield. Arnolfo di Lapo designed the church, and Brunelleschi built the cupola; but the existing façade -- for there have been three -- is very modern. Designed by De Fabris and finished in the year 1887, it is not unworthy to complete the vast design of the greater master.
The Duomo, or Cathedral, is crowned by the great red-tiled cupola, and is decorated with magnificent carvings and statues, and inlaid with coloured marble. The four lesser doors are all different, and all beautiful. The Porta della Mandorla is perhaps the loveliest, as it is the richest in ornament and fancy. Its carved columns are garlanded with fruit and foliage, and support the door, above which the warm colour of a mosaic represents the Annunciation, in a lunette. Above this, again, is a delightful carving representing Our Lady giving her girdle to St. Thomas, which completes the wonderful whole.
The interior strikes many people as being dull and gloomy, and particularly bare, when compared with the coloured dimness of Santa Maria Novella and the sunny depths of Santa Croce. But to others Santa Maria del Fiore conveys an impression of repose and devotion in the quiet of her vast spaces; and one feels in it, too, a curious sense of "aloofness," which the bareness and tranquillity of the great nave produce after the bustling piazza without, where the tram-bells ring and the whips crack all day long.
Two fine figures painted in grisaille, on either side the west door, attract one's attention first. They represent Sir John Hawkwood, the great English condottiere -- called by the Italians "Giovanni Aguto" -- who fought for the Republic in critical times, painted by Paolo Uccello, and a fellow-soldier of fortune, Niccolo da Tolentino, painted by Andrea del Castagno. They sit their horses perpetually guarding the great doors, -looking down from which one is filled with a sense of an ever-brooding greyness, dissipated only by the pale tints of blue and pink and green where the light falling from the windows makes faint patterns on the marble floor.
The chapels in the transepts have the same dim, grey character, pierced only by candle-flames (many candles are always burning at Our Lady's Altar), and by the lamps lighted before the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel of St. Zanobius, where Ghiberti's magnificent silver shrine can be admired.
Above the doors of the two sacristies are two very lovely terra-cotta lunettes by Luca della Robbia, showing the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord, their pale blues and greens and pearly white shining softly out from the grey walls. And the two sacristy doors also are partly Luca's work, and are carved with delightful heads of angels. Above them are two galleries, simple and ineffective, that have taken the place of the beautiful "cantorie" carved for the Cathedral by Luca della Robbia and Donatello, which are now in the Opera del' Duomo, the Museum, hard by.
Pausing for a moment beneath the cupola, one sees the fine effect of the great upspringing arches, the height of the roof, and the span of the lofty dome that seems to soar upward into far-off spaces of light and shade, in no way influenced by Vasari's half-effaced, cloudy frescoes. And the scattered worshippers, the yellow candleflames, and an occasional glimpse of a purple-clad canon, or of a priest with a touch of red where his white alb is fastened on his breast, all combine to make a picture which gives the impression that Santa Maria del Fiore offers the weary rest and a prayerful peace in the heart of the city's work and turmoil.
Impressions can be very strong, and they stand for a great deal in the chambers of memory, where, half unconsciously, we store so much that influences us when we recall places and people in after days. And this is why the venerable Church of St. John Baptist, the Baptistery of Florence, leaves on the mind an impression of the beginning of life and of the existence of a great tradition that knits Florence and her citizens irrevocably with the past. Here, where the children born to-day are carried to receive the Sacrament of Baptism, all the Florentines of the past -- many of whose names we now know to be immortal -- have been made Christians, and were received, perhaps, when their mothers carried them to the Font, by some such benign-looking old priest as he who to-day sits and waits for the swaddled babies, their bands hidden by very straight short frocks, brought to him to be made children of Holy Church.
Somehow, one forgets to gaze at the mosaics with which the lovely circular church is lined, to examine the carvings on the tomb of the anti-Pope, John XXIII., or to catch the breath, as one might well do, with a thrill of horror inspired by Donatello's terrible ascetic "St Mary Magdalene," with all that human interest clustering round the font. The touching little family groups patiently await their turn to approach and present "the baby" to the priest, first unwrapping the folds of the traditional white-and-gold baptismal cloth thrown over each child, which is in beauty of texture and broidery finer or simpler according to the parents' station in life. The good priest takes the infants in his arms with unwearied patience; while above his bowed figure the great bronze statue of the Baptist, the city's holy patron, raises his hand in blessing, -- a blessing which seems silently to reach the infant Florentines as their mothers carry them out of the dark old church into the sunlight beyond the door.
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