bound round the Duomo.[66] It took some three
hundred yards of the fabric, crusted with precious stones, painted with
miniatures, sewn with gold and silver, to gird the Duomo. I know not
when first it was made, nor who first conceived the proud thought,[67]
nor what particular victory put it into his heart. Only the tyrant and
thief who stole it I know, Gambacorti, whom Pisa brought back from
exile.

In the chamber next to this are some strangely beautiful crucifixes by
Giunta Pisano, and a little marvellous portrait of S. Francesco on
copper with a bright red book in his hand.

Of the pictures which follow, but two ever made any impression upon me.
One, a Madonna and Child by Gentile da Fabriano, is full of a mysterious
loveliness that did not survive him; the other is an altar-piece from S.
Caterina by Simone Martini of Siena, where a Magdalen holds the delicate
casket of precious ointment, and, as though fainting with the sweetness
of her weeping, leans a little, her sleepy, languorous eyes drooping
under her heavy hair, which a jewelled ribbon hardly holds up. Something
in this "primitive" art has been lost when we come to Angelico, some
almost morbid loveliness that you may find even yet in the air about
Perugia and Siena, in the delicate flowers there, the honeysuckle which
the country people call _le manine della Madonnina_--the little hands of
the Virgin, and even in the people sometimes, in their soft gestures and
dreamy looks. And for these I pass by the pictures by Benozzo Gozzoli,
by Sodoma, and the rest, for they are as nothing.

It is, however, not a work of art at all that is perhaps the most
interesting thing in the Museo; but a model of the _Giuoco del Ponte_,
with certain banners, flags, bucklers, and such, once used by the Pisans
in their national game.[68] This _Giuoco_ was played on the Ponte di
Mezzo, by the people who lived on the north bank of the river and those
on the south, nor were the country folk excluded; and Mr. Heywood tells
us that it was no uncommon sight a quarter of a century ago "to see
hanging above the doorway of a contadino's house the _targone_ [or
shield] with which his sires played at Ponte."[69] The city and
countryside being thus divided into two camps, as it were, each chose an
army, that was divided into six _squadre_ of from thirty to sixty
_soldati_. The _squadre_ of the north were, Santa Maria with a banner of
blue and white; San Michele, whose colours were white and