As already mentioned, it was not until twenty years later that the hall of the Signory was commenced.[30] Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti were the architects. The former was an artist much in request, and was not only incessantly engaged in the architectural works of the city, but also in the construction of the fortifications. His death happened in 1388. The superintendence of this building was entrusted likewise to the directors of Sta. Maria del Fiore, their funds exceeding their necessities. Although the building of the loggia of the Signory is ascribed to Orcagna in error, seeing that he had died eight years before, and had not lived even to see the square cleared, the way for it was prepared by the hall of the Bigallos, which was undoubtedly by his hands. The Gothic style had, even at the end of the previous century, displayed great boldness in the treatment of the pointed arch. The circular arch was now adopted, which in bold sweeps forms three openings on the façade, and one at each side. An architrave rises above the capitals of lofty but strongly built pillars, surmounted by a boldly projecting cornice, with wide cross-vaulting inside. Antique tradition was nowhere so perceptible as in this building, the unsurpassed, nay, unattainable, model for all later ones of the kind until the present day. In the year 1380, in which Antonio di Puccio, the ancestor of the yet flourishing family of the Pucci, executed the third vaulting, the building seems to have approached its completion, but eleven years longer sculptors and painters were occupied with its adornment by numerous sculptures in high and low relief, in which mosaic and colouring were employed to heighten the effect.[31]
Florentine sculpture of the latter part of the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries followed essentially the bent of Giovanni Pisano, who endeavoured to unite the decided tendencies of his father Nicolò towards the antique with those of the Gothic style, which then began to assert itself; and he thus traced out for his followers the way which they have long pursued. Andrea Pisano, the son of one Ugolino of Pontedera, was the chief representative of Giovanni’s school during the first half of the fourteenth century. If there is any question as to whether the design of the bronze door of the Baptistery, worked by him in 1330, being Giotto’s, the great influence exercised by Giotto on the sculpture of his time is undoubted. Neither Orcagna, whose most important work, the altar to the Virgin in Or San Michele, has already been mentioned, and who displays both in painting and in sculpture the greatest originality in conception and in form of any artist of this epoch, nor Andrea Pisano’s pupil, Alberto di Arnoldo, to whom the grave and noble group of the Virgin with Angels in the Oratorium of Bigallo is owing, was able to escape the influence of Giotto. The decoration of the façade of the cathedral, of the belfry and interior of the baptistery, as also of the side doors of the cathedral, with sculpture, statues, reliefs, and ornaments, gave employment, irrespectively of others, to numerous artists from foreign parts, but much of their work has unfortunately been destroyed or mutilated. Meanwhile the churches were being adorned with numerous frescoes and altar panels, particularly Sta. Croce, so rich in chapels, which was only completed in the following century, Sta. Trinità, which was enlarged in 1383, Sta. Maria Novella, Ognissanti, and others, in which work Agnolo Gaddi, Orcagna, Giovanni da Milano, Jacopo del Casentino, and many others were employed. Before the middle of the century the great chapter hall of Sta. Maria Novella, commonly called Capellone degli Spagnuoli, which contains the mural paintings ascribed, without ground, to the Siennese painter, Simon Martini, and Taddeo Gaddi, had been built by a citizen of Florence, named Buonamico di Lapo Guidalotti. The frescoes from the history of St. Benedict, by Spinello of Aretino, in San Miniato al Monte, date after the year 1380, and those from the New Testament in the Rinuccini chapel, probably by Giovanni da Milano,[32] somewhat earlier. Orcagna, who next to Giotto possessed the most catholic spirit of the century, had breathed a fresher and more original life into the school then dominant. He was followed pre-eminently by the two last-named masters, who, notwithstanding the duration of the Giottoesque traditions, herald in the coming epoch.
Not alone the end of the thirteenth, but the onward marching fourteenth century likewise beheld the establishment of great charitable institutions. In the year 1377 the building of the hospital was commenced, which Bonifacio de’ Lupi of Soragna, from Parma, formerly Podestà and Capitano del Popolo, dedicated as a mark of attachment to the city which had bestowed its freedom on him. In the course of centuries it has been much changed, but still exists as the Spedale di Bonifazio. Seven years later Lemmo Balducci, of Monticatini, founded the hospital of San Matteo, on the site now occupied by the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1400 the hospital Sta. Maria dell’Umiltà (San Giovanni di Dio) was erected by Simone Vespucci, near the houses of his family. Churches and monasteries followed one another, and, as the enlargement of the square of the Signory necessitated the demolition of a church, it was rebuilt in another place. In 1394 Bishop Onofrio Visdomini consecrated the magnificent charter-house of the Acciaiuoli, which was established at the public cost. In 1392 the convent Il Paradiso, before Porta San Nicolò, on the slope of the hill of Arcetri and Miniato, was founded by Messer Antonio degli Alberti, under the influence of the excitement created in the ecclesiastical world, then distracted with the great schism, by the report of the prophecies and piety of Bridget of Sweden, whose fame extended far beyond Rome, where she passed so many years of her life. This period showed itself grateful towards men of merit. In 1393 the directors of San Maria del Fiore received permission to raise a monument to John Hawkwood, who, as a commander under the name of Giovanni Aguto, had the thanks of the Republic for his faithful services. A year later it was resolved to erect in the same church a monument to the learned and useful public servant, the Augustine monk Luigi Marsigli. By a decree passed in the year 1396 it was intended to perpetuate in the same manner the memory of the lawyer Accursio, Zanobi da Strada, also Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The decree was, however, never carried out.
The power of the aristocracy, at the head of which were the Albizzi, now approached its height. After the unfortunate attempt of 1397 to obtain some popular balance to this domination, a less violent state of affairs came gradually about, one manifestation of which was the great expenditure of money, both by the State and private individuals, in the prosecution of important and valuable works. This activity renders the period worthy to be compared with the end of the previous century, and formed a new epoch in the history of art. It was formerly the custom to associate the name of the Medici with the outburst of the Italian Renaissance, and likewise with the height of its perfection at the beginning of the fifteenth century. They had, however, only followed in the footsteps of their predecessors the Albizzi, and Pope Julius II.
The stages of the progress of the Renaissance are visible, in following the history of art, from Benci di Cione, to Brunellesco, from Orcagna and Alberto d’Arnoldo to Ghiberti and Donatello, from Orcagna again, Spinello, and Nicolò di Pietro, to Masolino and Masaccio. In the province of architecture, classical art entered again upon its rights under the influence of the new spirit. Brunellesco, who, while in his native town, had fixed his attention on Roman edifices, accustomed his eye when in Rome to the large dimensions and simple yet harmonious forms of ancient art. The Italian Gothic, which is not of one cast, but more or less dependent upon the older forms of art, must, in comparison with the latter, appear arbitrary in its character. Yet the classical principle obtained by no means an easy victory. The greatest work of the period, the dome of Sta. Maria del Fiore, is the result of a compromise, which under the circumstances was unavoidable, between the traditions of two epochs, and between the characters of two different tendencies. The requirements both of a strict division and demarcation of masses, and the perception of grand beauty and ample space had also to be reconciled. So in other branches of art the Gothic style asserted itself for a length of time by the side of the new tendency.
In February 1393 a commission was first appointed for the building of the dome, the sacristy, and the canonica of the cathedral.[33] But it was a full quarter of a century before the work was fairly begun. On August 19, 1418, the famous competition, which has since been celebrated in a novel, was invited for models of the dome. On November 14, 1419, a commission of ‘Officiales Cupolæ’ was appointed, consisting of four of the principal citizens. April 16, 1420, the office of Proveditores was conferred on Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo Ghiberti and Battista d’Antonio; and on August 12, 1434, it was resolved that the lantern with which the dome was to be closed should be built after Brunellesco’s model. The lantern was, however, only completed in 1462, sixteen years after the great artist’s death.[34] The greatest and most complex work of modern architecture belongs consequently to the time when the Albizzis held