[16] Arnolfo was born in 1232 at Colle, in the Val d'Elsa. He was a sculptor as well as architect, the assistant of Niccola Pisano at Siena, and the maker of the tomb of Cardinal de Braye at Orvieto. This tomb is remarkable as the earliest instance of the canopy withdrawn by attendant angels from the dead man's form, afterwards so frequently adopted by the Pisan school. [17] Giov. Villani, viii. 26. [18] See Milizia, vol. i. p. 135. These walls were not finished till some, time after Arnolfo's death. They lost their ornament of towers in the siege of 1529, and they are now being rapidly destroyed. [19] From Perkins's _Tuscan Sculptors_, vol. i. p. 54. A recent work by Signor G.J. Cavallucci, entitled _S. Maria del Fiore_, Firenze, 1881, has created a revolution in our knowledge regarding this church. [20] Giov. Villani, x. 192. [21] _Illustrated Handbook of Architecture_, book vi. chap. i. [22] _Ib._ [23] See Grüner's _Terra Cotta Architecture of North Italy_, plates 3 and 4. [24] Compare what Alberti says in his preface to the Treatise on Painting, _Opere_, vol. iv. p. 12. "Chi mai sì duro e sì invido non lodasse Pippo architetto vedendo quì struttura si grande, erta sopra i cieli, ampla da coprire con sua ombra tutti i popoli toscani, fatta sanza alcuno aiuto di travamenti o di copia di legname, quale artificio certo, se io ben giudico, come a questi tempi era incredibile potersi, così forse appresso gli antiqui fu non saputo nè conosciuto?" [25] What the church of S. Petronio at Bologna would have been, if it had been completed on the scale contemplated, can hardly be imagined. As it stands, it is immense, and coldly bare in its immensity. Yet the present church is but the nave of a temple designed with transepts and choir. The length was to have been 800 feet, the width of the transepts 625, the dome 183 feet in diameter. A building so colossal in extent, and so monotonously meagre in conception, could not but have been a failure. [26] Vol. II., _Revival of Learning_, chap, 1. [27] The following passage quoted from Milizia, _Memorie degli Architetti_, Parma, 1781, vol. i. p. 135, illustrates the contemptuous attitude of Italian critics to Gothic architecture. After describing Arnolfo's building of the Florentine Duomo, he proceeds: "In questo Architetto si vide qualche leggiero barlume di buona Architettura, come di Pittura in Cimabue suo contemporaneo. Ma in tutte le cose e fisiche e morali i passaggi si fanno per insensibili gradagioni; onde per lungo tempo ancora si mantenne il corrotto gusto, che si può chiamare Arabo-Tedesco." [28] Observe, for example, the casing of a Gothic church at Rimini by Alberti with a series of Roman arches; or the façade of S. Andrea at Mantua, where the vast and lofty central arch leads, not into the nave itself, but into a shallow vestibule. [29] See Burckhardt, _Cicerone_, vol. i. p. 167. [30] See De Stendhal, _Histoire de la Peinture en Italie_, p. 122.