s made us believe in the goodness of the
Apostle, which, as Michelangelo is reported to have said must have
vouched for the truth of what he taught.

The masterpiece, certainly, of these Tuscan sculptures is the bronze
group of Christ and St. Thomas by Verrocchio, which I have so loved. All
the work of this master is full of eagerness and force: something of
that strangeness without which there is no excellent beauty, that later
was so characteristic of the work of his pupil Leonardo, you will find
in this work also, a subtlety sometimes a little elaborate, that, as I
think is but a sort of over-eagerness to express all he has thought to
say. Donatello prepared this niche for him at the end of his life it was
almost his last work; and Verrocchio, after many years of labour, had
thought to place here really his masterpiece, in the church that, more
than any other, belonged to the people of the city, that middle class,
as we might say, from which he sprang. How perfectly, and yet not
altogether without affectation, he has composed that difficult scene, so
that St. Thomas stands a little out of the setting, and places his
finger--yes, almost as a child might do--in the wounded side of Jesus,
who stands majestically fair before him. It is true the drapery is
complicated, a little heavy even, but with what care he has remembered
everything! Consider the grace of those beautiful folds, the beauty of
the hair, the loveliness of the hands: and then, as Burckhardt reminds
us, as a piece of work founded and cast in bronze, it is almost
inimitable.

* * * * *

Within, the church is strange and splendid. It is as though one stood in
a loggia in deep shadow, at the end of the day in the last gold of the
sunset; and there, amid the ancient fading glory of the frescoes, is the
wonderful shrine that Orcagna made for the picture of Madonna, who had
turned the Granary of S. Michele into the Church of the People. Finished
in 1359, this tabernacle is the loveliest work of the kind in Italy, an
unique masterpiece, and perhaps the most beautiful example of the
Italian Gothic manner in existence. Orcagna seems to have been at work
on it for some ten years, covering it with decoration and carving those
reliefs of the Life of the Virgin in that grand style which he had found
in Giotto and learned perhaps from Andrea Pisano. To describe the shrine
itself would be impossible and useless. It is like some miniature