ANDREA ORCAGNA. -(1308-1376. )

A large place in the history of Florentine art is that held by Andrea Arcagnuolo, surnamed Cione, because he was the son of Matteo Cione, who was himself an unrivalled goldsmith in his day, and to whom we owe part of a work matchless in its way, viz., the famous silver altar treasured up in the Opera del Duomo."

Orcagna was born in 1308, and the date of his death is given by some authorities as 1368, and by others as 1376. He was goldsmith, architect, painter, sculptor, and even poet, combining, like so many of his compatriots in the fourteenth and two following centuries, manifold gifts. As a goldsmith he worked under the direction of his father, and he received lessons in painting from his eldest brother, Bernardi. He soon gave up the goldsmith's trade for fresco painting, and there is reason to believe that his greatest paintings were done while he was between five- and-twenty and five-and-thirty. His brother Bernardi, many of whose works are ascribed to Andrea, painted the two large frescoes of Hell and Heaven in Santa Maria Novella, though he was assisted in them by his brother. He showed so much talent in easel-painting the London National Gallery has a fine specimen of his pictures in the "Coronation of the Virgin " that he was employed to decorate the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa. This was the great work of his life, and he showed real genius in painting a commentary on those lines in which Horace describes how "pale death with one blow overturns the cottage of the poor and the palace of the great." A good deal is said about "realism " and "naturalism" in the present day, but Oreagna rendered palpable by his unpretentious style of art the idea which he had in his mind, and the most simple cannot fail to seize his meaning.

Andrea Oreagna first distinguished himself as an architect in connection with Or San Michele. Arnolfo had built upon the site of an old Lombard church dedicated to St. Michael a sort of Loggia, to be used as a corn mart, of the kind so common in Italy, the vaulted roof resting on brick columns, with open arches between them. A celebrated painter of his day, Ugolino of Siena, had decorated one of the columns with a Madonna, and about the middle of the thirteenth century this became a place of pilgrimage. In 1294 it was rumored that a miracle had been wrought there in presence of the people, and crowds came on market days with votive offerings, until at last the wealthy corn merchants determined to erect a building more worthy of the object of their worship. The opportunity occurred in 1304, when, by the carelessness of a prior of San Piero Scheraggio, known as "Neri Abati," the corn market was burnt down, together with seven hundred houses and towers.

At the joint initiative of the corn merchants and of a lay order which had assumed the guardianship of the Madonna, the members styleing themselves captains of Or San Michele (Or being derived from Horreum, granary), it was resolved to rebuild the Loggia, and the work was intrusted to Taddeo Gaddi, at that time chief architect (Capo Maestro) of the Commune. Above the part set aside for the corn exchange he built two stories, one for the Administration and the other for the granaries, which accounts for the peculiar shape of what is now the church. The first stone was laid with great pomp, and two years later the Corporation of Silk-weavers (Arte della Seta) having asked permission to place the statue of their patron saint in one of the niches of the new building, the other corporations asked a like favor. Thus it was that in course of time the original use of the building was changed, and it came to be a consecrated place of worship. Large sums were continually being bequeathed to it, and in fifty years the gifts of the pilgrims alone amounted to 350,000 florins. When the plague raged in Tuscany, carrying off three-fifths of the inhabitants of Florence, four-fifths of the population of Pisa, and eight thousand inhabitants of Siena, the Florentines might have been seen kneeling night and day before the Virgin of the Pillar, offering to dedicate their fortunes to her if they were spared. The Signoria, acting in accordance with the popular feeling, passed a law by which the captains of Or San Michele were to receive a third of the property of persons who had slain one of their relatives in order to obtain his or her inheritance.

It was under these circumstances that Andrea Orcagna was called in to transform the granary into a church, its history and situation making it one of the most interesting monuments in Florence. There it stands, without perspective or set-off, as impossible to sketch or to photograph as to see, situated in a narrow and ill-built street, along which, as is so often the case in Florence, one might pass without noticing it. Orcagna closed in the open arches with Gothic windows, placing the niches for the different patron saints of the guilds between them. The famous painting of Ugolino of Siena was enclosed by him in a shrine, a work unique of its kind.

This shrine is of white marble, and Gothic in style, the sculptures representing the principal episodes in the life of the Virgin. The holy image is in the centre of the composition, which is surmounted by an open-worked lid, with statuettes of the Archangel Michael and an angel above. There is a whole mass of basreliefis, statues, busts, mosaics, incrusted stones, brilliant enamels, and stained glass, the great variety of material not marring the general harmony. Perkins, in his " Italian Sculptors," gives the following complete description of it, accompanied by etchings of some of the bas-reliefs. He says, "Upon three sides of the base, in octagonal recesses, are bas-reliefs representing the Birth, Presentation, and Marriage of the Virgin, the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and an angel announcing to the Virgin her approaching end. The Virgin, represented as an aged woman, is looking with an expression of hope and submission at the divine messenger, and is receiving a palm branch, which will render her body invisible to the Jews when carried to the tomb. . . . The subjects are divided by small bas-reliefs, representing the Christian virtues, and surrounded by small figures personifying the Virtues, the Sciences, and the Arts. Above the base and behind the shrine there is a large panel representing the death of the Madonna, laid out upon her bed and surrounded by the Apostles, and her ascent in the mystic 'Mandorla,' whence she lets fall her belt, to convince the doubting St. Thomas."

It is worth noting that Oreagna, instead of concealing his identity, as was the case with so many of his contemporaries, made a point of signing his works, and on the shrine in San Michele may be read in Gothic letters the inscription, "Andreas Fiorentinus LIXMCCC." He also reproduced his own features in one of the bas-reliefs of this shrine, executed, as the inscription proves, when he was only thirty years of age.

Those who are interested in art will also observe that most of the great artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, who were at once architects, painters, sculptors, and goldsmiths, place the word "sculptor or "goldsmith " in the corner of a picture ; while to a piece of sculpture they append the signature of painter " or "architect," as if to prove that their talents were manifold. Such was the case with Ghiberti, Pollaiuolo, Pisanello, Francia, and several others. The celebrated Madonna by Ugolino, which caused the Loggia to be converted into a church, has not, unfortunately, survived, for he painted " alla, Greca," and as he transferred it at once on "Intonaco," to use the term of the day, it had either been destroyed by the fire of 1304, or had gradually been obliterated by the damp air before Orcagna made the shrine. But an artist whose Paine is unknown some pupil of Giotto, no doubt painted a Madonna on canvas for it.

Orcagna was ten years about this work, beginning by closing in the arcades and by opening a door on to the Via Calimara, completely changing the appearance which the Loggia had when built by Taddeo Gaddi.

The church, as we see it now, is the result of two centuries of embellishments, but it was in the fifteenth century more especially that the guilds showed the greatest liberality, the result of the respective donations of the wool-carders, the butchers, the smiths, the farriers, etc., being a sort of external altar, very peculiar in shape, and having a mass of variegated ornamentation, typical of the development of the sculptor's art in Florence.

Apart from its artistic importance, Or San Michele is interesting, because it symbolizes the strength and influence of the guilds of Florence, which may be said to have made the city not only wealthy and famous, but noble and beautiful. The guilds, in short, were the first and most beneficent patrons of art in Florence and throughout Italy.

There were fourteen niches on the outside, and these were gradually filled with statues of the patron saints of the various guilds, whose banners were displayed from them on the festival of St. Anne. This ceremony, which was one of the most imposing of the year, was first observed upon the expulsion of the Duke of Athens, and notwithstanding the dissolution of the guilds, it is still carried on.

Beginning at the northwest, we see the statue of St. Matthew, by Michelozzo Michelozzi, and a careful inspection of the hem of the. cloak which the saint is represented as wearing will disclose the following inscription : "Opus, Universitatis cansorum, Florentine An. Dom. MCCCCXX." The niche itself was designed by Niccolo Aretino, and the guild of money-changers bore the cost.

Lorenzo Ghiberti did the statue of St. Stephen, in the second niche, for the Guild of Wool-cumbers. The Guild of Smiths employed Nanni, the son of Antonio di Banco, less famous than Ghiberti, but an artist of sterling ability, to carve their statue. A bas-relief at the foot represents the bishop under whose protection this guild placed itself, in the act of shoeing a horse possessed by a devil. This facade, looking on to a dark, narrow street, is often overlooked by visitors, but, with its singular corridor connecting the upper stories of Or San Michele with the neighboring house, it is very picturesque. The street in question is called " Sdrucciolo di San Michele." The flax merchants obtained permission to place the statue of their patron saint (St. Mark-) in the first niche of the south side, and the work was intrusted to Donatello, who carved a statue which is not so much admired as many of his works, though Michael Angelo is reported to have said of it, "How can any one not believe the Gospel, when it is preached by a saint whose countenance is honesty itself ?"

Donatello also did the, statue of St. George for the armorers, and this is one of the finest specimens of the sculptor's art. St. George is in full armor, standing upright, and with one hand resting on his shield. The noble and tranquil dignity of the saint, defying as it were, an invisible enemy, is the most striking feature in this remarkable work.

On the pedestal may be seen a small bas-relief by Donatello of St. George slaying the Dragon, a terracotta reproduction of which is in the South Kensington Museum.