But this only
increases in me the reverence with which I ought to stand before the
work of a painter, who was not only a master of his own craft, but so
profound a scholar and theologian as to be able to conceive this scheme
of picture, and write the divine law by which Florence was to live.
Which Law, written in the northern page of this Vaulted Book, we will
begin quiet interpretation of, if you care to return hither, to-morrow
morning.
THE FIFTH MORNING.
THE STRAIT GATE.
As you return this morning to St. Mary's, you may as well observe--the
matter before us being concerning gates,--that the western facade of the
church is of two periods. Your Murray refers it all to the latest of these;
--I forget when, and do not care;--in which the largest flanking columns,
and the entire effective mass of the walls, with their riband mosaics and
high pediment, were built in front of, and above, what the barbarian
renaissance designer chose to leave of the pure old Dominican church. You
may see his ungainly jointings at the pedestals of the great columns,
running through the pretty, parti-coloured base, which, with the 'Strait'
Gothic doors, and the entire lines of the fronting and flanking tombs
(where not restored by the Devil-begotten brood of modern Florence), is
of pure, and exquisitely severe and refined, fourteenth century Gothic,
with superbly carved bearings on its shields. The small detached line of
tombs on the left, untouched in its sweet colour and living weed ornament,
I would fain have painted, stone by stone: but one can never draw in front
of a church in these republican days; for all the blackguard children of
the neighbourhood come to howl, and throw stones, on the steps, and the
ball or stone play against these sculptured tombs, as a dead wall adapted
for that purpose only, is incessant in the fine days when I could have
worked.
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