Like Ghiberti's bronze gates, this exquisitely lovely tower of marble has beauty beyond words: "That bright, smooth, sunny surface of glowing jasper, those spiral shafts and fairy traceries, so white, so faint, so crystalline, that their slight shapes are hardly traced in darkness on the pallor of the eastern sky, that serene height of mountain alabaster, coloured like a morning cloud, and chased like a sea-shell." It was commenced by Giotto himself in 1334, when the first stone was solemnly laid. When Giotto died in 1336, the work had probably not risen above the stage of the lower series of reliefs. Andrea Pisano was chosen to succeed him, and he carried it on from 1337 to 1342, finishing the first story and bringing it up to the first of the three stories of windows; it will be observed that Andrea, who was primarily a sculptor, unlike Giotto, made provision for the presence of large monumental statues as well as reliefs in his decorative scheme. Through some misunderstanding, Andrea was then deprived of the work, which was intrusted to Francesco Talenti. Francesco Talenti carried it on until 1387, making a general modification in the architecture and decoration; the three most beautiful windows, increasing in size as we ascend, with their beautiful Gothic tracery, are his work. According to Giotto's original plan, the whole was to have been crowned with a pyramidical steeple or spire; Vasari says that it was abandoned "because it was a German thing, and of antiquated fashion."