Dante's picture--Sir John Hawkwood--Ancestor and Descendant--The Pazzi
Conspiracy--Squeamish Montesecco--Giuliano de' Medici dies--Lorenzo's
escape--Vengeance on the Pazzi--Botticelli's cartoon--High
Mass--Luca della Robbia--Michelangelo nearing the end--The Miracles
of Zenobius--East and West meet in splendour--Marsilio Ficino and
the New Learning--Beautiful glass.

Of the four men most concerned in the structure of the Duomo I have
already spoken. There are other men held in memory there, and certain
paintings and statues, of which I wish to speak now.

The picture of Dante in the left aisle was painted by command of
the Republic in 1465, one hundred and sixty-three years after his
banishment from the city. Lectures on Dante were frequently delivered
in the churches of Florence during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and it was interesting for those attending them to have
a portrait on the wall. This picture was painted by Domenico di
Michelino, the portrait of Dante being prepared for him by Alessio
Baldovinetti, who probably took it from Giotto's fresco in the chapel
of the Podesta at the Bargello. In this picture Dante stands between
the Inferno and a concentrated Florence in which portions of the
Duomo, the Signoria, the Badia, the Bargello, and Or San Michele are
visible. Behind him is Paradise. In his hand is the "Divine Comedy". I
say no more of the poet here, because a large part of the chapter on
the Badia is given to him.

Near the Dante picture in the left aisle are two Donatellos--the
massive S. John the Evangelist, seated, who might have given ideas
to Michelangelo for his Moses a century and more later; and, nearer
the door, between the tablets to De Fabris and Squarciaparello, the
so-called Poggio Bracciolini, a witty Italian statesman and Humanist
and friend of the Medici, who, however, since he was much younger than
this figure at the time of its exhibition, and is not known to have
visited Florence till later, probably did not sit for it. But it is
a powerful and very natural work, although its author never intended
it to stand on any floor, even of so dim a cathedral as this. The
S. John, I may say, was brought from the old facade--not Arnolfo's,
but the committee's facade--where it had a niche about ten feet from
the ground. The Poggio was also on this facade, but higher. It was
Poggio's son, Jacopo, who took part in the Pazzi Conspiracy, of which
we are about to read, and was very pro