The first two chapels of the left transept (fifth and fourth from the
choir, respectively,) contain fourteenth century frescoes; a warrior
of the Bardi family rising to judgment, the healing of Constantine's
leprosy and other miracles of St. Sylvester, ascribed to Maso di
Banco; the martyrdom of St. Lawrence and the martyrdom of St.
Stephen, by Bernardo Daddi (the painter to whom it is attempted to
ascribe the famous Last Judgment and Triumph of Death in the Pisan
Campo Santo). All these imply a certain Dantesque selection; these
subjects are among the examples quoted for purposes of meditation or
admonition in the _Divina Commedia_. The coloured terracotta relief is
by Giovanni della Robbia. The frescoes of the choir, by Agnolo Gaddi,
are among the finest works of Giotto's school. They set forth the
history of the wood of the True Cross, which, according to the legend,
was a shoot of the tree of Eden planted by Seth on Adam's grave; the
Queen of Sheba prophetically adored it, when she came to visit Solomon
during the building of the Temple; cast into the pool of Bethsaida,
the Jews dragged it out to make the Cross for Christ; then, after it
had been buried on Mount Calvary for three centuries, St. Helen
discovered it by its power of raising the dead to life. These subjects
are set forth on the right wall; on the left, we have the taking of
the relic of the Cross by the Persians under Chosroes, and its
recovery by the Emperor Heraclius. In the scene where the Emperor
barefooted carries the Cross into Jerusalem, the painter has
introduced his own portrait, near one of the gates of the city, with a
small beard and a red hood. Vasari thinks poorly of these frescoes;
but the legend of the True Cross is of some importance to the student
of Dante, whose profound allegory of the Church and Empire in the
Earthly Paradise, at the close of the _Purgatorio_, is to some extent
based upon it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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