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A forlorn façade The church of the Medici Cosimo's parents' tomb Donatello's cantoria and pulpits Brunelleschi's sacristy Donatello again The palace of the dead Grand Dukes Costly intarsia Michelangelo's sacristy A weary Titan's life The victim of capricious pontiffs The Medici tombs Mementi mori The Casa Buonarroti Brunelleschi's cloisters A model library.
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 inlay of wood has been called marquetry and intarsia, and was used principally on furniture and choir stalls. Labarte gives the origin of this art in Italy to the twelfth century. The Guild of Carpenters in Florence had a branch of Intarsiatura workers, which included all forms of inlay in wood.
The Museum cantoria has the wonderful frieze of dancing figures; this is an exercise in marble intarsia. It has the same row of pillars with little specks of mosaic gold; but its beauty is that of delicate proportions and soft tones. The cantoria is in the left aisle, in its original place; the two bronze pulpits are in the nave.
As regards metal-work, whether in iron or bronze, avowedly modern, but of the true cinque-cento type and style, the amateur would do well to visit the foundries and workshops of Venice; for intarsia he may go to Milan; for wood-carving to Florence, Siena and Perugia; to the last also for intarsia.
This work was naturally facilitated and encouraged by increasing commerce between different nations, which rendered available a greater variety of woods. In some of the early Italian "intarsia" the decoration was cut into the surface of the panel piece by piece.
Felicia was dazzled by the splendour of the great show within the tapestries, the pictures, the gleaming reflections on lacquer and intarsia, on ebony or Sèvres. But the atmosphere was stifling. Melrose now could only live in the temperature of a hothouse. Dixon threw open a door, and without a word beckoned to Felicia to enter.
He will find in Perugia work both in carving and intarsia on which he might spend his money very much more advantageously than in buying second-rate bits of really old wood-work, or indeed any such bits as he is at all likely to meet with.
All this, as will be readily perceived, afforded fine opportunities for the display of rich carvings and intarsia; and there was much rivalry between the guilds in the splendor and adornment of their places of meeting.
The Rucellai chapel contains a model of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusalem, in marble and intarsia, by the great Alberti one of the most jewel-like little buildings imaginable. Within it are the faint vestiges of a fresco which the stable-boy calls a Botticelli, and indeed the hands and faces of the angels, such as one can see of them with a farthing dip, do not render the suggestion impossible.
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