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Charity, again, with a flaming heart in her hand, crowned with a flaming brazier, and suckling a child, is Giottesque not only in allegorical conception but also in choice of type and treatment of drapery. While admiring the tabernacle of Orsammichele, we are reminded that Orcagna was a goldsmith to begin with, and a painter. Sculpture he practised as an accessory.
Of his genius as a painter, proved by the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel, I shall have to speak hereafter. As a sculptor he is best known through the tabernacle of Orsammichele, built to enshrine the picture of the Madonna by Ugolino da Siena.
What the unique genius of Ghiberti made not merely pardonable but even admirable, became under other hands no less repulsive than the transference of pictorial effects to painted glass. That Ghiberti was not a great sculptor of statues is proved by his work at Orsammichele. He was no architect, as we know from his incompetence to do more than impede Brunelleschi in the building of the dome.
Among the details which he has supplied upon these topics deserve to be commemorated the enormous bequests to public charities in Florence 350,000 florins to the Society of Orsammichele, 25,000 to the Compagnia della Misericordia, and 25,000 to the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.
Though the church of Orsammichele owes its present form to Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as capo maëstro after Gaddi's death, completed the structure; and though the Loggia de' Lanzi, long ascribed to him by writers upon architecture, is now known to be the work of Benci di Cione, yet Orcagna's Loggia del Bigallo, more modest but not less beautiful, prepared the way for its construction.
Niccola Pisano Obscurity of the Sources for a History of Early Italian Sculpture Vasari's Legend of Pisano Deposition from the Cross at Lucca Study of Nature and the Antique Sarcophagus at Pisa Pisan Pulpit Niccola's School Giovanni Pisano Pulpit in S. Andrea at Pistoja Fragments of his work at Pisa Tomb of Benedict XI. at Perugia Bas-reliefs at Orvieto Andrea Pisano Relation of Sculpture to Painting Giotto Subordination of Sculpture to Architecture in Italy Pisano's Influence in Venice Balduccio of Pisa Orcagna The Tabernacle of Orsammichele The Gates of the Florentine Baptistery Competition of Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, and Della Quercia Comparison of Ghiberti's and Brunelleschi's Trial-pieces Comparison of Ghiberti and Della Quercia The Bas-reliefs of S. Petronio Ghiberti's Education His Pictorial Style in Bas-relief His Feeling for the Antique Donatello Early Visit to Rome Christian Subjects Realistic Treatment S. George and David Judith Equestrian Statue of Gattamelata Influence of Donatello's Naturalism Andrea Verocchio His David Statue of Colleoni Alessandro Leopardi Lionardo's Statue of Francesco Sforza The Pollajuoli Tombs of Sixtus IV. and Innocent VIII. Luca della Robbia His Treatment of Glazed Earthenware Agostino di Duccio The Oratory of S. Bernardino at Perugia Antonio Rossellino Matteo Civitali Mino da Fiesole Benedetto da Majano Characteristics and Masterpieces of this Group Sepulchral Monuments Andrea Contucci's Tombs in S. Maria del Popolo Desiderio da Settignano Sculpture in S. Francesco at Rimini Venetian Sculpture Verona Guido Mazzoni of Modena Certosa of Pavia Colleoni Chapel at Bergamo Sansovino at Venice Pagan Sculpture Michael Angelo's Scholars Baccio Bandinelli Bartolommeo Ammanati Cellini Gian Bologna Survey of the History of Renaissance Sculpture.
You need not go into the Bargello to understand Luca and Andrea at their happy task; as well go to a botanical museum to read the secret of April. See them on the dusty wall of Orsammichele. They have wrought the blossom of the stone clusters of bright-eyed flowers with the throats and eyes of angels, singing, you might say, a children's hymn to Our Lady, throned and pure in the midst of the bevy.
The former is a marble statue placed upon the north wall of Orsammichele; the latter is a bronze, cast for Cosimo de' Medici, and now exhibited in the Bargello. Without striving to idealise his models, the sculptor has expressed in both the Christian conception of heroism, fearless in the face of danger, and sustained by faith.
Giotto's campanile, Brunelleschi's cupola, and Orcagna's church of Orsammichele, in spite of their undoubted and authentic originality, are placed where he had planned. In 1294 the Florentines determined to rebuild their mother-church upon a scale of unexampled grandeur.
Florence still points with pride to the "Incredulity of Thomas" on the eastern wall of Orsammichele, to the "Boy and Dolphin" in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to the "David" of this sculptor: but the first is spoiled by heaviness and angularity of drapery; the second, though fanciful and marked by fluttering movement, is but a caprice; the third outdoes the hardest work of Donatello by its realism.
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