474]

He was thus able to see with his own eyes the admirable activity, owing
to which rose throughout Italy monuments wherein all kinds of
contradictory aspirations mingled, and which are nevertheless so
harmonious in their _ensemble_, monuments of which Giotto's campanile is
the type, wherein we still recognise the Middle Ages, even while we
foresee the Renaissance--with Gothic windows and a general aspect which
is classic, where the sentiment of realism and everyday life is combined
with veneration for antique art, where Apelles is represented painting a
triptych of Gothic shape. Pisa had already, at that day, its leaning
tower, its cathedral, its baptistery, the exterior ornamentation of
which had just been changed, its Campo Santo, the paintings of which
were not finished, and were not yet attributed to Orcagna. Along the
walls of the cemetery he could examine that first collection of antiques
which inspired the Tuscan artists, the sarcophagus, with the story of
Phaedra and Hippolytus, which Nicholas of Pisa took for his model. He
could see at Pistoja the pulpit carved by William of Pisa, with the
magnificent nude torso of a woman, imitated from the antique. At
Florence the Palazzo Vecchio, which was not yet called thus, was
finished; so were the Bargello, Santa-Croce, Santa-Maria-Novella.
Or-San-Michele was being built; the Loggia of the Lansquenets was
scarcely begun; the baptistery had as yet only one of its famous doors
of bronze; the cathedral disappeared under scaffoldings; the workmen
were busy with the nave and the apse. Giotto's campanile had been
finished by his pupil Gaddi, the Ponte Vecchio, which did not deserve
that name any better than the palace, had been rebuilt by the same
Gaddi, and along the causeway which continued it, through clusters of
cypress and olive trees, the road led up to San Miniato, all resplendent
with its marbles, its mosaics, and its paintings. On other ranges of
hills, amid more cypress and more olive trees, by the side of Roman
ruins, arose the church of Fiesole, and half-way to Florence waved in
the sunlight the thick foliage overshadowing the villa which, during the
great plague had sheltered the young men and the ladies of the
"Decameron."

The movement was a general one. Each town strove to emulate its
neighbour, not only on the battlefields, which were a very frequent
trysting-place, but in artistic progress; paintings, mosaics, carvings,
shone in all the palaces and chu