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Authors: Mary McCarthy
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polychrome marble inserts, stone lions on supporting columns, writhing stone serpents. The Pisan style, sometimes fusing with the Luccan, and rich itself in sculptures and tiers on tiers of graceful loggias, made its way into the remote parishes of rural Tuscany, like the spices from the East—to steep Volterra and Carrara, far south to the ancient mining town of Massa Maríttima, inland to Arezzo and the wool town of Prato, across the water to the islands of Corsica and Sardinia.
This trail of tigerish architecture stopped short of Florence, where the classic tradition was proof against the exotic. The black-and-white (sometimes, as elsewhere, dark-green-and-white) marbles of the Baptistery and San Miniato and the Badia at San Domenico di Fiesole are not striped or banded but arranged in charming geometric patterns—in lozenges or diamonds, long wavy lines like the water pattern in hieroglyphics, squares, boxes, rosettes, suns and stars, wheels, semi-circles, semi-ellipses, tongues of flame. These delightful designs, fresh and gay, are associated with classic architectural elements: pure Corinthian columns, entablature, and pediments. Unlike the burly Lombard churches of their period, the Florentine Romanesque churches, though simple, are never rough; and unlike the Pisan Romanesque, which dealt in marvels and monsters (the leaning of the Tower of Pisa appears an ordained accident) and combined many foreign styles and influences, as Pisa mingled traffic in its port, the Florentine retained its own local innocence and ordered clarity. No column ever grossly twisted in medieval Florence; nor did stone snakes glide through the Eden into which Giotto was born, a shepherd boy. As early as the thirteenth century, the Florentines were straightening their streets and piazzas. Decrees were promulgated that new streets must be ‘pulchrae, amplae, et rectae’, for the sake of the city’s decorum. A street that was not beautiful, straight, and broad, it was said, would be ‘turpis et inhonesta’.
There is something of the simple chapel in all the Florentine Romanesque churches—a chapel in the woods or at a crossing of roads. The Baptistery, dressed outside in black-and-white marble and inside in black-and-white marble and mosaics, a pure octagon topped by a pyramidal roof, with a dome inside and below it, formerly, a pool in which every year a communal baptism was performed on all the children born that year in Florence, was originally the Cathedral. San Miniato keeps the pure early-Christian basilica form, with the choir, however, raised very high, like an anthem, over the crypt and flanked by elegant flights of marble stairs. In the pavement is a remarkably beautiful mosaic design, in black on white, showing the signs of the zodiac, doves, and lions; at the end of the nave is a great triumphal arch, in black-and-white marble inlaid with doves and candelabra. San Miniato stands on what was once the cemetery in which the early Christians were buried; the simplicity of interment marks it, just as the simplicity of baptism marks the Baptistery. The Badia at San Domenico di Fiesole, which has a diminutive geometric dark-green-and-white marble façade set in its stone body like a jewel, was dictated by a vision accorded to a saintly hermit; redone by Brunelleschi in the Renaissance for Cosimo il Vecchio, it still has the air of a hermitage perched in the hills.
Innocent legends cling to these candid temples, with their black-and-white sign language of diamonds, circles, water, and fire. An elm outside the Baptistery is supposed to have burst into leaf in midwinter when the corpse of Saint Zenobius was carried past it; a pillar commemorates the flowering tree. Two porphyry columns on either side of the east Baptistery doors have a story of Pisan perfidy attached to them: they were magic columns, in whose polished surfaces treasons and machinations against the state could be seen; the Florentines had won them, as trophy, from the
This trail of tigerish architecture stopped short of Florence, where the classic tradition was proof against the exotic. The black-and-white (sometimes, as elsewhere, dark-green-and-white) marbles of the Baptistery and San Miniato and the Badia at San Domenico di Fiesole are not striped or banded but arranged in charming geometric patterns—in lozenges or diamonds, long wavy lines like the water pattern in hieroglyphics, squares, boxes, rosettes, suns and stars, wheels, semi-circles, semi-ellipses, tongues of flame. These delightful designs, fresh and gay, are associated with classic architectural elements: pure Corinthian columns, entablature, and pediments. Unlike the burly Lombard churches of their period, the Florentine Romanesque churches, though simple, are never rough; and unlike the Pisan Romanesque, which dealt in marvels and monsters (the leaning of the Tower of Pisa appears an ordained accident) and combined many foreign styles and influences, as Pisa mingled traffic in its port, the Florentine retained its own local innocence and ordered clarity. No column ever grossly twisted in medieval Florence; nor did stone snakes glide through the Eden into which Giotto was born, a shepherd boy. As early as the thirteenth century, the Florentines were straightening their streets and piazzas. Decrees were promulgated that new streets must be ‘pulchrae, amplae, et rectae’, for the sake of the city’s decorum. A street that was not beautiful, straight, and broad, it was said, would be ‘turpis et inhonesta’.
There is something of the simple chapel in all the Florentine Romanesque churches—a chapel in the woods or at a crossing of roads. The Baptistery, dressed outside in black-and-white marble and inside in black-and-white marble and mosaics, a pure octagon topped by a pyramidal roof, with a dome inside and below it, formerly, a pool in which every year a communal baptism was performed on all the children born that year in Florence, was originally the Cathedral. San Miniato keeps the pure early-Christian basilica form, with the choir, however, raised very high, like an anthem, over the crypt and flanked by elegant flights of marble stairs. In the pavement is a remarkably beautiful mosaic design, in black on white, showing the signs of the zodiac, doves, and lions; at the end of the nave is a great triumphal arch, in black-and-white marble inlaid with doves and candelabra. San Miniato stands on what was once the cemetery in which the early Christians were buried; the simplicity of interment marks it, just as the simplicity of baptism marks the Baptistery. The Badia at San Domenico di Fiesole, which has a diminutive geometric dark-green-and-white marble façade set in its stone body like a jewel, was dictated by a vision accorded to a saintly hermit; redone by Brunelleschi in the Renaissance for Cosimo il Vecchio, it still has the air of a hermitage perched in the hills.
Innocent legends cling to these candid temples, with their black-and-white sign language of diamonds, circles, water, and fire. An elm outside the Baptistery is supposed to have burst into leaf in midwinter when the corpse of Saint Zenobius was carried past it; a pillar commemorates the flowering tree. Two porphyry columns on either side of the east Baptistery doors have a story of Pisan perfidy attached to them: they were magic columns, in whose polished surfaces treasons and machinations against the state could be seen; the Florentines had won them, as trophy, from the
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