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Updated: May 16, 2025
Moreover, the baptistery is beneath the apse which terminates this aisle, and it was certainly completed in 1452, since it is mentioned in the contract for the sacristy. The mixture of Gothic and Renaissance forms is characteristic of Giorgio's work throughout; and it is difficult to agree wholly either with Mgr. Fosco or Mr.
The wreck of Florence, says Mr. Ruskin, "is now too ghastly and heart-breaking to any human soul that remembers the days of old"; and these desperate words are an allusion to the fact that the little square in front of the cathedral, at the foot of Giotto's Tower, with the grand Baptistery on the other side, is now the resort of a number of hackney-coaches and omnibuses.
The pillars procured for this laudable purpose at Riez, with their beautiful, carved capitals, gave the little baptistery its one decoration, and far from disturbing the simplicity of its style, they add a slenderness and height and harmony to a room which, without them, would be too stiffly bare.
When the young Ghiberti heard that the competition was open to all, he determined to go to Florence and work for the prize; in his own words: "When my friends wrote to me that the governors of the Baptistery were sending for masters whose skill in bronze working they wished to prove, and that from all Italian lands many maestri were coming, to place themselves in this strife of talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Sig.
It is worth while to recount the wonderful things he saw; they were the cathedral with the dome of Brunelleschi, the tower of Giotto, the marbles and bronzes of Donatello, the baptistery gates of Ghiberti, the pictures of Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, Fra Angelico, and many other older masters, while Michael Angelo and Leonardo were surprising themselves and all others with their beautiful works.
Some one either bought and liberated several air balloons, or the string holding them was surreptitiously cut; but however it happened, the balls escaped and suddenly the crowd sent up a triumphant yell. At first I could see no reason for it, the Baptistery intervening, but then the balls swam into our ken and steadily floated over the cathedral out of sight amid tremendous satisfaction.
It is possible that the baptistery once had a canopy such as still exists at Cividale, and that the fragments here and at the cathedral formed part of it. The nave has six bays, with five antique columns on each side, of cipollino, granite, white and black, and white-veined marble. The caps are very varied.
For the rest, I recall a gaunt Baptist in wood, said to be by Donatello, on one of the altars to the left of the choir; and the bronze Baptist in the Baptistery, less realistic, by Sansovino; the pretty figures of Innocence and S. Anthony of Padua on the holy water basins just inside the main door; and the corners of delectable medieval cities in intarsia work on the stalls.
The great attraction of Pisa lies just outside of the city proper, consisting of a group of edifices which are celebrated all over the world. These are the Cathedral, the Baptistery, and the Belfry, or, as it is more generally known, the Leaning Tower. Each of these is separated from the others by several rods. The Cathedral is the oldest structure, and has an existence covering a thousand years.
In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of market is held, and stores of old iron and other small merchandise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are grouped together, the Cathedral with its great Dome, the beautiful Italian Gothic Tower the Campanile, and the Baptistery with its wrought bronze doors.
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