ti and
his son Simone are said to have worked on it. The question is to a large
extent a matter of indifference. What is important here is the fact that
it is to the greater Guilds and to the Parte Guelfa that we owe the
church itself--that is to say, to the merchants and trades of the
city--while the beautiful shrine within is due to a secular Company
consisting of some of the greatest citizens, and to a large extent
opposed to the regular Orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis. It is,
then, as the great church of the _popolo_ that we have to consider Or
San Michele. Here, because their greatest and most splendid deed, the
expulsion of the Duke of Athens, had been achieved on St. Anne's Day,
July 26, 1343, they built a chapel to St. Anne, and around the church
on every anniversary, above the fourteen niches which hold the statues
presented by the seven greater arts, by six of the fourteen lesser arts,
and by the Magistrato della Mercanzia, that magistracy which governed
all the guilds,[95] their banners are set up even to this day.

The great Guild of Wool was already responsible for the Duomo, and it
was for this reason, it might seem, that to the Guild of Silk was given
the care of Or San Michele; not altogether without jealousy, it might
seem, for when they had asked leave to place the image of their saint in
one of the niches there, all the other guilds had demanded a like
favour, thus in an especial manner marking the place as the Church of
the Merchants, the true _popolo_; the great popular shrine of Florence,
therefore, since Florence was a city of merchants.

It is on the south side, in the niche nearest to Via Calzaioli, that the
Guild of Silk set its statue of St. John the Evangelist by Baccio da
Montelupo; next to it is an empty niche belonging to the Guild of
Apothecaries and Doctors. Here a Madonna and Child by Simone Ferrucci
once stood, but, owing to a rumour current in the seventeenth century,
that Madonna sometimes moved her eyes, the statue was placed inside the
church, so that the crowd which always collected to see this miracle
might no longer stop the way. In the next niche the Furriers placed a
statue of St. James by Nanni di Banco, and beyond, the Guild of Linen
set up a statue of St. Mark by Donatello. On the west, in the first
niche, is S. Lo, the patron of the Furriers, carved by Nanni di Banco,
and beyond, St. Stephen, set there by the Guild of Wool and carved by
Ghiberti; while next to him s