raised only for its own qualities, and blamed only
for its own defects.

[89] Cf. _Donatello_, by Lord Balcarres: Duckworth, 1903, p. 12.

[90] Not the ball we see now, which was struck by lightning and hurled
into the street in 1492. Verrocchio's was rather smaller than the
present ball.

[91] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, _History of Painting in Italy_: London,
1903, p. 116, note 4.

[92] See pp. 283-289.

XIII. FLORENCE

OR SAN MICHELE

Or San Michele, S. Michele in Orto, was till the middle of the
thirteenth century a little church belonging, as it is said, to the
Cistercians, who certainly claimed the patronage of it. About 1260,
however, the Commune of Florence began to dispute this right with the
Order, and at last pulled down the church, building there, thirty years
later, a loggia of brick, after a design by Arnolfo di Cambio, according
to Vasari, who tells us that it was covered with a simple roof and that
the piers were of brick. This loggia was the corn-market of the city, a
shelter, too, for the contadini who came to show their samples and to
talk, gossip, and chaffer, as they do everywhere in Italy even to-day.
And, as was the custom, they made a shrine of Madonna there, hanging on
one of the brick pillars a picture (_tavola_) of Madonna that, as it is
said, was the work of Ugolino da Siena. This shrine soon became famous
for the miracles Madonna wrought there. "On July 3rd," says Giovanni
Villani, writing of the year 1292, "great and manifest miracles began to
be shown forth in the city of Florence by a figure of Saint Mary which
was painted on a pilaster of the loggia of S. Michele d'Orto, where the
corn was sold: the sick were healed, the deformed were made straight,
and those who were possessed of devils were delivered from them in
numbers." In the previous year the Compagnia di Or San Michele, called
the Laudesi, had been established, and this Company, putting the fame of
the miracles to good use, grew rich, much to the disgust of the Friars
Minor and the Dominicans. "The Preaching Friars and the Friars Minor
likewise," says Villani, "through envy or some other cause, would put no
faith in that image, whereby they fell into great infamy with the
people. But so greatly grew the fame of these miracles and the merits of
Our Lady, that pilgrims flocked thither from all Tuscany for her festas,
bringing divers waxen images because of the wonders, so that a great
part of the loggia in front of