All around the base of the tower runs a wonderful series of bas-reliefs on a very small scale, setting forth the whole history of human skill under divine guidance, from the creation of man to the reign of art, science, and letters, in twenty-seven exquisitely "inlaid jewels of Giotto's." At each corner of the tower are three shields, the red Cross of the People between the red lilies of the Commune. "This smallness of scale," says Ruskin of these reliefs "enabled the master workmen of the tower to execute them with their own hands; and for the rest, in the very finest architecture, the decoration of the most precious kind is usually thought of as a jewel, and set with space round it--as the jewels of a crown, or the clasp of a girdle." These twenty-seven subjects, with the possible exception of the last five on the northern side, were designed by Giotto himself; and are, together with the first bronze door, the greatest Florentine work in sculpture of the first half of the fourteenth century. The execution is, in the main, Andrea Pisano's; but there is a constant tradition that some of the reliefs are from Giotto's own hand. Antonio Pucci, in the eighty-fifth canto of his _Centiloquio_, distinctly states that Giotto carved the earlier ones, _i primi intagli fe con bello stile_, and Pucci was almost Giotto's contemporary. "Pastoral life," "Jubal," "Tubal Cain," "Sculpture," "Painting," are the special subjects which it is most plausible, or perhaps most attractive, to ascribe to him. On the western side we have the creation of Man, the creation of Woman; and then, thirdly, Adam and Eve toiling, or you may call it the dignity of labour, if you will--Giotto's rendering of the thought which John Ball was to give deadly meaning to, or ever the fourteenth century closed-- When Adam delved and Evë span, Who was then the gentleman?