Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/879

O R C A G N A 815 Another fine altar-piece on panel by Orcagna, dated 1363, is preserved in the Cappella de Medici near the sacristy of Sta Croce ; it represents the four doctors of the Latin church. According to Vasari, Orcagna also painted some very fine frescos in Sta Croce, similar in subjects to those attributed to him in the Campo Santo of Pisa, and full of fine portraits. These do not now exist. In the cathedral of Florence, on one of the northern piers, there hangs a nobly -designed and highly -finished picture on panel by Orcagna, representing S. Zanobio enthroned, trampling under his feet Cruelty and Pride ; at the sides are kneel ing figures of SS. Eugenius and Crescentius, the whole very rich in colour. The retable mentioned by Vasari as having been painted for the Florentine church of S. Pietro Maggiore is now in the National Gallery of London. It is a richly decorative composition of the Coronation of the Virgin, between rows of saints, together with nine other subjects painted in miniature. Other paintings on panel by Orcagna were sent by the Pope to Avignon, but cannot now be traced. The frescos also have been destroyed with which, according to Vasari, Orcagna decorated the facade of S. Apollinare and the Cappella de Cresci in the church of the Servi in Florence. 1 2. Orcagna as a Sculptor and Architect? In 1355 Or cagna was appointed architect to the chapel of Or San Michele in Florence. This curiously -planned building, with a large upper room over the vaulting of the lover part, had been begun by Taddeo Gaddi as a thank-offering for the cessation of the plague of 1348. It took the place of an earlier oratory designed by Arnolfo del Cambio, and was the gift of the united trade guilds of Florence. As to the building itself, it is impossible to say how much is due to Taddeo Gaddi and how much to Orcagua, but the great marble tabernacle was wholly by Orcagna. This, in its combined splendour of architectural design, sculptured reliefs and statuettes, and mosaic enrichments, is one of the most important and beautiful works of art which even rich Italy possesses. It combines an altar, a shrine, a reredos, and a baldacchino. In general form it is perhaps the purest and most gracefully designed of all specimens of Italian Gothic. It is a tall structure of white marble, with vaulted canopy and richly-decorated gables and pin nacles, reaching almost to the vaulted roof of the chapel. The detail is extremely delicate, and brilliant gem-like colour is given by lavish enrichments of minute patterns in glass mosaic, inlaid in the white marble of the structure. It is put together with the greatest care and precision ; Vasari especially notes the fact that the whole was put together without any cement, which might have stained the purity of the marble, all the parts being closely fitted together with bronze dowels. The spire-like summit of the tabernacle is surmounted by a figure of St Michael, and at a lower stage on the roof are statuettes of the apostles. The altar has a relief of Hope between panels with the Marriage of the Virgin and the Annunciation. On the right side, looking east, of the base of the tabernacle are reliefs of the Birth of the Virgin and her Presentation in the Temple ; on the left, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi and behind, the Presentation of Christ in the 1 The magnificent but much injured frescos of the Last Judgment, Hell, and the Triumph of Death in the Pisau Cumpo Santo, described with great minuteness and enthusiasm by Vasari, are attributed by him to Orcagna, but internal evidence seems to show that they are productions of the Sienese school. Crowe and Cavalcaselle attribute them to the two brothers Lorenzetti of Siena, but they have been so injured by wet, the settlement of the wall, and repeated retouchings that it is difficult to come to any clear decision as to their authorship. It appears, however, much more probable that they are the work of Bernardo DaddL 2 Orcagna was admitted as a member of the Sculptors Guild in 1352. His name occurs in the roll as "Andreas Cionis vocatus Arcaguolus, pictor." Temple, and the Angel warning the Virgin to escape into Egypt. Above the last two subjects are large reliefs of the Death of the Virgin, surrounded by the apostles, and higher still her Assumption ; she stands in a vesica, and is borne by angels to heaven. On the base of the Virgin s tomb is inscribed "Andreas Cionis pictor Florentinvs oratorii archimagister extitit hvjvs mccclix." Orcagna s own portrait is given as one of the apostles. In addition to these richly-composed subject-reliefs the whole work is adorned with many other single figures and heads of pro phets, angels, and the Virtues, all executed with wonderful finish and refinement. The shrine, which forms an aum bry in the reredos, contains a miraculous picture of the Madonna. A fine bronze screen, with open geometrical tracery, encloses the whole. No work of sculpture in Italy is more magnificent than this wonderful tabernacle, both in general effect and in the delicate beauty of the reliefs and statuettes with which it is so lavishly enriched. It cost the enormous sum of 96,000 gold florins. Unfor tunately it is very badly placed and insufficiently lighted, so that a minute examination of its beauties is a work of difficulty. No mention is made by Vasari of Orcagna s residence in Orvieto, where he occupied for some time the post of "capo- maestro " to the duo-mo. 1 He accepted this appointment on IJrth June 1358 at the large salary (for that time) of 300 gold florins a year. His brother Matteo was engaged to work under him, receiving 8 florins a month. When Orcagna accepted this appointment at Orvieto he had not yet finished his work at Or San Michele, and so Avas obliged to make long visits to Florence, which naturally interfered with the satisfactory performance of his work for the Orvietans. The result was that on the 12th of September 1360 Orcagna, having been paid for his work up to that time, resigned the post of " capo-maestro " of the duomo, though he still remained a little longer in Orvieto to finish a large mosaic picture on the west front. When this mosaic (made of glass tesserae from Venice) was finished in 1362, it was found to be uneven in surface, and not fixed securely into its cement bed. An arbitration was therefore held as to the price Orcagna was to receive for it, and he was awarded 60 gold florins. Vasari mentions as other architectural "works by Orcagna the design for the piers in the nave of the Florentine duomo, a zecca or mint, which appears not to have been carried out, and the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria. It is, however, more than doubtful whether Orcagna had any hand in this last building, a very grace ful vaulted structure, with three semicircular open arches on the side and one at each end, intended to form a shel tered meeting -place for the Priori during elections and other public transactions. This loggia was ordered by the General Council of Florence in 1356, but was not actually begun till the year 1376, after Orcagna s death. The architects were Benci di Cione (possibly a brother of Orcagna) and Simone di Francesco Talenti, both men of considerable reputation in Florence. The sculptured re liefs of the seven Virtues in the spandrels of the arches of the loggia, also attributed to Orcagna by Vasari, were later still. They were designed by Angelo Gaddi (1383-1386), and were carried out by three or four different sculptors. Pupils of Orcagna named by Yasari are Bernardo Nello, a Pisan, Tommasodi Marco, a Florentine, and, chief of all, Francesco Traini, whose grand painting on panel of St Thomas Aquinas enthroned with the arch- heretics at his feet still hangs in the church for which it was painted, Sta Caterina at Pisa. Orcagna had, in ad dition to the two daughters mentioned above, a son named Cione, who was a painter of but little eminence. Some sonnets attributed to Orcagna exist in MS. in the Strozzi and Magliabecchian libraries 1 See Milanesi, Storia dctt Arte Toscana, p. 233 (Siena, 1873) ; Luzi, DUMHO d Orckio ; and Yasari, ed. Milanesi, i. p. 617 (Florence, 1878).