nts architecture was no less improved than
painting had been by Cimabue, was born in the year 1232, and was
thirty-two years of age at his father's death. He was at that time
held in very great esteem, because, not only had he learned all that
his father had to teach, but had studied design under Cimabue in
order to make use of it in sculpture, so that he was reputed the best
architect in Tuscany. Thus not only did the Florentines found, under
his direction, the last circuit of the walls of their city in the
year 1284, but they also built, after his design, the loggia and
pillars of Or San Michele, where grain is sold, constructing it of
brick with a simple roof above. It was also in conformity with his
advice that when the cliff of the Magnoli fell, on the slope of S,
Giorgio above S. Lucia in the via dei Bardi, a public decree was
issued the same year that no walls or edifices should ever more be
erected in that place seeing that they would always be in danger
owing to the undermining of the rock by water. That this is true has
been seen in our day in the fall of many buildings and fine houses of
the aristocracy. The year after, 1285, he founded the loggia and
piazza of the priors, and in the Boedia of Florence he constructed the
principal chapel and those on either side of it, restoring both the
church and choir, which had originally been built on a much smaller
scale by Count Ugo, the founder. For the cardinal Giovanni degli
Orsini, papal legate in Tuscany, he built the campanile of that
church, which woo some praise among the works of those times, but it
did not receive its stone finishing until after the year 1303. His
next work was the foundation, in 1294, of the church of S, Croce,
where the friars minors are. Arnolfo designed the nave and side
aisles of this church on such a large scale that he was unable to
vault the space under the roof owing to the great distances, so with
much judgment he made arches from pillar to pillar, and on these he
placed the roof with stone gutters along the top of the arches to
carry off the water, inclined at such an angle that the roof should
be safe, as it is, from the danger of damp. This thing was so novel
and ingenious that it well deserves the consideration of our day. He
next prepared plans for the first cloisters of the old convent of
that church, and shortly after he removed from the outside of the
church of S. Giovanni all the arches and tombs of marble and stone
which