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Updated: June 6, 2025
Neither this mountain of marble, nor the lacework and pinnacles which adorn the enormous mass, nor the amazing number of statues, nor the sight of men smaller than flies on the Piazza del Duomo, nor the vast stretch of flat country which spreads for miles on every side of the city none of these sights kindled the spark of enthusiasm within me which has often glowed for much less.
Both churches are hospitable and, apart from the cloisters, free and eminently suited for dallying in; thus differing from the Duomo, which is dark, and S. Lorenzo, where there are payments to be made and attendants to discourage. An effort should be made at S. Maria Novella to get into the old cloisters, which are very large and indicate what a vast convent it once was. But there is no certainty.
These years spent under the shadow of the Duomo, away from which no Florentine is happy, working at his sculptures and drawings, were probably some of the happiest years of Michael Angelo’s whole life. Much of his time was wasted owing to the different dispositions and likings of his patrons, yet we must be thankful to them for the opportunities they gave him in their great undertakings.
Then, having grown weary of living at Volterra and in the house of that nobleman, as one who was accustomed to being free, he departed and went off to Pisa, where, at the instance of Battista del Cervelliera, he executed two pictures for Messer Bastiano della Seta, the Warden of Works of the Duomo, which were placed in the recess behind the high-altar of that Duomo, beside those of Sogliani and Beccafumi.
And as we drove to the Duomo in this procession, all the shops and windows on the road were hung with satin draperies and filled with men and women, and it was impossible to count the crowds of people who thronged every part of the streets.
Meanwhile the works of the Duomo of Milan, that other great foundation of the Visconti dukes, were being vigorously carried on.
It was the father of the man who showed us the model, and owned the shop, who had made the miniature duomo. His name was Giacomo Mattarelli, and he was an extraordinary genius, worthy of a tomb in the Cathedral to the worship of whose beauty he devoted twenty years of his life and sacrificed those which remained.
Moro!" up the long Strada Nova, with its marble palaces, and newly painted loggias adorned with busts and frescoes, in front of the stately Ateneo with its halls and porticoes for the different schools, which had the reputation of being the finest university in all Italy, and past the rising walls of the new Duomo which Lodovico was building on the site of the ruined basilica of Charlemagne's time.
This great lady, finding herself unable to enthral Bonaparte, had given herself to his Chief of the Staff, whom she loved with a fire of wantonness and a refined sensuality which left their mark on the weak-kneed Berthier for the rest of his days. "For my own part," interrupted Lieutenant Thézard, "I shall never forget a little water-melon seller on the steps of the Duomo, who...."
In the Duomo Vecchio he made in fresco three different figures of Our Lady; and within the principal door of that church, on the left hand as one enters, he painted in fresco a story of the Blessed Tommasuolo, a sack-cloth hermit and a holy man of that time.
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