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Vasari knew no difference between these two kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained habit of reading the mythology and ethics of design.
An ecclesiastical congress, calling itself a council-general, but altogether unworthy of that august title, was held, in fact, in the following year at Pisa, under the auspices of the King of France and the emperor Maximilian.
We had then the city, with its domes and towers, grown full height out of the plain through which the Arno curves in the stateliest crescent of all its course. The day had turned finer than any other day I can now think of in my whole life, and I was once more in Pisa without the care for its history or art or even novelty which had corroded my mind in former visits.
I therefore waited its abatement in a darkened room, packed up our coach without waiting to copy over the verses my admiration of the place had prompted, and drove forward to Sienna, through Pisa again, where our friends told us of the damages done by the tempest; and shewed us a pretty little church just out of town, where the officiating priest at the altar was saved almost by miracle, as the lightning melted one of the chalices completely, and twisted the brazen-gilt crucifix quite round in a very astonishing manner.
Only to save you from the consequences of marrying a poor girl who was not fit to become your wife. It almost broke my heart to leave you; for I had nothing to keep up my courage but the remembrance that I was going away for your sake. I had to think of that, morning and night to think of it always, or I am afraid I should have faltered in my resolution, and have gone back to Pisa.
There must have been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, surely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian railroad was thrown open. Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturino, and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day. The roadside crosses in this part of Italy are numerous and curious.
Such massive arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering broad-winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great blocks of stone of which these edifices are built can never decay; walls that are as thick as an ordinary American doorway is high cannot crumble. The republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the Middle Ages.
The famous cartoon of the battle of Pisa, a work of Michael Angelo, which he produced in a glorious competition with the Homer of painting, Leonardo da Vinci, and in which he had struck out the idea of a new style, is only known by a print which has preserved the wonderful composition; for the original, it is said, was cut into pieces by the mad jealousy of BACCIO BANDINELLI, whose whole life was made miserable by his consciousness of a superior rival.
And then you will not pass without entering, it may be, S. Maria della Spina, where of old the huntsmen used to hear Mass at dawn before going about their occasions. And many another church in Pisa is devout and beautiful.
The Florentines being wholly disarmed, brought ten thousand French to Pisa for to take it: by which course they ran more hazzard, than in any time of their troubles. The Emperor of Constantinople, to oppress his neighbors, brought into Greece ten thousand Turks, who when the war was ended, could not be got out thence, which was the beginning of Greeces servitude under the Infidels.
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