Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10): Cimabue to Agnolo GaddiVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10): Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
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 and worthy of being considered
to-day. He then gave the design for the first cloisters of the old
convent of that church, and a little time after he caused to be removed
from round the Church of S. Giovanni, on the outer side, all the arches
and tombs of marble and grey-stone that were there, and had part of them
placed behind the campanile on the facade of the Canon's house, beside
the Company of S. Zanobi; and then he incrusted with black marble from
Prato all the eight outer walls of the said S. Giovanni, removing the
grey-stone that there had been before between these ancient marbles. The
Florentines, in the meanwhile, wishing to build walls in the Valdarno di
Sopra round Castello di San Giovanni and Castel Franco, for the
convenience of the city and of their victualling by means of the
markets, Arnolfo made the design for them in the year 1295, and
satisfied them in such a manner, as well in this as he had done in the
other works, that he was made citizen of Florence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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