itecture gained no less betterment
than painting had gained from that of Cimabue, being born in the year
1232, was thirty years of age when his father died, and was held in very
great esteem, for the reason that, having not only learnt from his
father all that he knew, but having also given attention under Cimabue
to design in order to make use of it in sculpture, he was held by so
much the best architect in Tuscany, that not only did the Florentines
found the last circle of the walls of their city under his direction, in
the year 1284, and make after his design the Loggia and the piers of Or
San Michele, where the grain was sold, building them of bricks and with
a simple roof above, but by his counsel, in the same year when the
Poggio de' Magnuoli collapsed, on the brow of S. Giorgio above S. Lucia
in the Via de' Bardi, they determined by means of a public decree that
there should be no more building on the said spot, nor should any
edifice be ever made, seeing that by the sinking of the stones, which
have water trickling under them, there would be always danger in
whatsoever edifice might be made there. That this is true has been seen
in our own day from the ruin of many buildings and magnificent houses of
noblemen. In the next year, 1285, he founded the Loggia and Piazza de'
Priori, and built the principal chapel of the Badia of Florence, and the
two that are on either side of it, renovating the church and the choir,
which at first had been made much smaller by Count Ugo, founder of that
abbey; and for Cardinal Giovanni degli Orsini, Legate of the Pope in
Tuscany, he built the campanile of the said church, which, according to
the works of those times, was much praised, although it did not have its
completion of grey-stone until afterwards, in the year 1330.

After this there was founded with his design, in the year 1294, the
Church of S. Croce, where the Friars Minor have their seat. What with
the middle nave and the two lesser ones Arnolfo constructed this so
wide, that, being unable to make the vaulting below the roof by reason
of the too great space, he, with much judgment, caused arches to be made
from pier to pier, and upon these he placed the roofs on a slope,
building stone gutters over the said arches in order to carry away the
rain-water, and giving them so much fall as to make the roofs secure, as
they are, from the danger of rotting; which device was not only new and
ingenious then, but is equally useful an