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The left pulpit is the finer, for it contains the "Crucifixion" and the "Deposition," which to me form the most striking of the panels. The other piece of sculpture in the church itself is a ciborium by Desiderio da Settignano, in the chapel at the end of the right transept an exquisite work by this rare and playful and distinguished hand.
The nave is about 88 ft. long, the aisles within the towers 81 ft., breadth of nave, 19 ft. 6 in., of the aisles 9 ft. 9 in. The ciborium is exceedingly interesting. It rests upon four octagonal columns of the red marble of Lustizza, a place not far away. The altar was rebuilt and beautified in 1362, and it is probable that the baldacchino is of that date.
The nave is five bays long, the arcade is round-arched with pretty caps and ornamented archivolts, and the floor is paved with red and white marble in chequers. The holy-water basins are simple, and the columns of the ciborium rest on two red marble caps of the fourteenth century upside down, one base of the same and one of the Lombardi period, showing the use of older material.
Meanwhile Abbe Judaine had already deposited the ciborium on a little table, between two lighted tapers, which looked like woeful stars in the semi-obscurity of the ward. Madame de Jonquiere had just decided to open one of the windows quite wide, for the odour emanating from all the suffering bodies and heaped-up rags had become unbearable.
Through and down a little flight of steps, he reached a cellar which was the ancient martyrium where, of old, in time of war the ciborium was concealed. An altar stood in the middle of this well, dedicated in the name of Saint Lubin. In the crypt the distant hum of the bells, the sounds of life in the cathedral above, could still be heard; here, nothing! It was like being in the tomb.
On the vault of the ciborium and on the jamb of the main door are inscriptions, dated respectively 1332 and 1324, recording their erection by "Joannis de Bvtvane, archiep: Jadren." Certain portions show by their style that additions and alterations were made, still later. The length is 170 ft. and the width 65 ft.
You should really use your influence to persuade the patient to submit to surgical treatment; I will answer for his life, provided that no untoward circumstance occurs during the operation." "I will return as soon as I have taken the sacred ciborium back to the church," said the Abbe Duplanty, "for M. Schmucke's condition claims the support of religion."
To the right is a ciborium altar, with a relief of Christ in the tomb half-length, supported by the Virgin and S. John, flanked by two scroll-bearing angels. An inscription describes it as an oratory, where relics of the saints are venerated. The pillars bear an architrave a shell-he ad beneath, an arch above, and a gable termination of early Renaissance shape above a shallow cornice.
Several small windows high in the nave walls still retain the slabs pierced with ninth-century patterns, and two unbroken ciborium or baptistery archivolts still exist, one in the courtyard of the Beata Vergine della Miscricordia, and the other in the Piazza S. Giovanni, where it is made up into a little shrine with two fourteenth-century caps, and a Renaissance pediment with two uprights of a chancel of Lombard work, with three furrowed scrolls and crosses of the usual Syrian derivation.
The sarcophagus of Andreaccio, in which his wife was also buried, was found beneath the street in 1840, between the cathedral and the bishop's palace. A portion of the ciborium of his church is encrusted in the wall of the sacristy inscribed: "Andree sci ad honorem sociorvmq majorem," and other fragments of the same period have been found during the restoration, which is still going on.
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