On the southern façade, we have St. Mark in marble for the minor Art
of Linaioli and Rigattieri, flax merchants and hucksters, by
Donatello, (about 1412).[32] The Arte dei Vaiai e Pellicciai,
furriers, although a greater Guild, seems to have been contented with
the rather insignificant marble St. James, which follows, of uncertain
authorship, and dating from the end of the Trecento; the bas-relief
seems later. The next shrine, that of the Doctors and Apothecaries,
the great Guild to which Dante belonged and which included painters
and booksellers, is empty; the Madonna herself is their patroness, but
their statue is now inside the church; the Madonna and Child in the
medallion above are by Luca della Robbia. The next niche is that of
the great Arte della Seta or Arte di Por Santa Maria, the Guild of the
Silk-merchants, to which embroiderers, goldsmiths and silversmiths
were attached; the bronze statue of their patron, St. John the
Evangelist, is by Baccio da Montelupo (1515), and replaces an earlier
marble now in the Bargello; the medallion above with their arms, a
gate on a shield supported by two cherubs, is by Luca della Robbia.
[32] The eight Arti Minori not represented are the vintners (St.
Martin), the inn-keepers (St. Julian), the cheesemongers (St.
Bartholomew), the leather-dressers (St. Augustine), the saddlemakers
(the Blessed Trinity), the joiners (the Annunciation), tin and
coppersmiths (St. Zenobius), and the bakers (St. Lawrence).
Finally, on the façade in the Via Calzaioli, the first shrine is that
of the Arte di Calimala or Arte dei Mercatanti, who carried on the
great commerce in foreign cloth, the chief democratic guild of the
latter half of the thirteenth century, but which, together with the
Arte della Lana, began somewhat to decline towards the middle of the
Quattrocento; their bronze St. John Baptist is Ghiberti's, but hardly
one of his better works (1415). The large central tabernacle was
originally assigned to the Parte Guelfa, the only organisation outside
of the Guilds that was allowed to share in this work; for them,
Donatello made a bronze statue of their patron, St. Louis of Toulouse,
and either Donatello himself or Michelozzo prepared, in 1423, the
beautiful niche for him which is still here. But, owing to the great
unpopularity of the Parte Guelfa and their complete loss of authority
under the new Medicean regime, this tabernacle was taken from them in
1459 and made over to the Università dei Mercanti or Magistrato della
Mercanzia, a board of magistrates who presided over all the Guilds;
the arms of this magistracy were set up in the present medallion by
Luca della Robbia in 1462; Donatello's St. Louis was sent to the
friars minor; and, some years later, Verrocchio cast the present
masterly group of Christ and St. Thomas. Landucci, in his diary for
1483, tells us how it was set up, and that the bronze figure of the
Saviour seemed to him the most beautiful that had ever been made. Last
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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