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Updated: June 15, 2025
Arnolfo only lived to see a portion of this, his greatest work, completed "the three principal tribunes which were under the cupola," and which Vasari tells us were so solid and strongly built as to be able to bear the full weight of Brunelleschi's dome, which was much larger and heavier than the one the original architect had himself designed.
The cathedral designed by Arnolfo was of vast dimensions: it covers 84,802 feet, while that of Cologne covers 81,461 feet; and, says Fergusson, "as far as mere conception of plan goes, there can be little doubt but that the Florentine cathedral far surpasses its German rival." Nothing, indeed, can be imagined more noble than the scheme of this huge edifice.
The Duomo was founded, as some say, in 1294, the same year in which Santa Croce was begun, or, according to others, in 1298; and between these two dates, in 1296, the Palace of the Signoria, the seat of the Commonwealth, the center of all public life, had its commencement. All these great buildings, Arnolfo designed and began, and his genius requires no other evidence.
It is, however, in the work of his pupils Giovanni Pisano and Arnolfo Fiorentino that Tuscan sculpture begins to throw off the yoke of antiquity and to express itself.
Lapis lazuli, malachite, and jasper were used largely, as well as bloodstones, onyx, and Rosso Antico. In Florentine Pietra Dura work, the inlay of two hard and equally cut materials reached its climax. Arnolfo del Cambio, who built the Cathedral of Sta.
In order to obtain perfect symmetry, it would have been necessary to build upon the detested soil of the Ghibelline house, rebellious and proscribed by the Uberti; something that the Guelph faction, then all-powerful, were not willing to allow the architect, Arnolfo di Lapo, to do. Learned men contest the truth of this tradition; we will not discuss here the value of their objections.
About 1260, however, the Commune of Florence began to dispute this right with the Order, and at last pulled down the church, building there, thirty years later, a loggia of brick, after a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, according to Vasari, who tells us that it was covered with a simple roof and that the piers were of brick.
His physical strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horse-shoe like a coil of lead. The Duomo, the work of artists from beyond the Alps, so fantastic to the eye of a Florentine used to the mellow, unbroken surfaces of Giotto and Arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of Milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful and dreamlike.
The whole was magnificently adorned with varied and diverse pictures, and finally the roof of the Great Hall was raised twelve braccia above its former height; insomuch that if Arnolfo, Michelozzo, and the others who laboured on the building from its first foundation onwards, were to return to life, they would not recognize it nay, they would believe that it was not theirs but a new erection and a different edifice.
Is it not clearly seen how great improvement was acquired by architecture to begin with one starting-point from the time of the Greek Buschetto to that of the German Arnolfo and of Giotto?
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