the cathedral in which this work was to have the most honourable place possible allotted to it. At the first mention of the building of the Foundling Hospital, begun in 1421 at the expense of the silk-weavers’ company, it is remarked that ‘this beautiful building is destined for the reception of those whose father and mother have maliciously forsaken them, contrary to the rights of nature.’ As the silk guild here, so was the woollen guild in Sta. Maria del Fiore entrusted with the guidance of the works, beside the regular building committee (Opera del Duomo). The share of the companies in the building and decoration of Or San Michele is repeatedly mentioned. As a matter of course, all that concerned the adornment of the city, the churches not excepted, must be subordinate to the requirements of safety and defence. In 1353, when the people were fighting against Giovanni Visconti, and afterwards, when the enterprise of Cardinal d’Albornoz for regaining Romagna for the Holy See gave a prospect of unsettled times, and the disorder of the freebooters led by the Knight of St. John of Montreal (Fra Moriale) began, the money held in readiness for the bell-tower was employed in enlisting men. As late as October 1368, when the city fell to bickerings with the Emperor Charles IV., which were then, as usual, made use of by the Visconti for the extension of their own power over Tuscany, and when their mercenary bands penetrated to the gates of Florence, a decree was passed that the sums destined for the completion of Sta. Maria del Fiore should be employed for strengthening and repairing the walls. The architects of the church were soon afterwards commanded to build a wall along the river, from the Castell Altafronte, which is still in partial preservation, and which joins the Uffizi, built in the sixteenth century, to the Rubaconte bridge, and to level the road ‘as should appear most suitable to the adornment of the city.’