palace
wonderfully carved and contrived, a toy that has been thrown aside. In
the Palazzo Comunale the little daughter of Florence has gathered all
her broken treasures: here a discarded Madonna, there a Bambino long
since forgotten; flowers, too, flowers of the wayside, faded now, such
as a little country girl will gather and toss into your vettura at any
village corner in Tuscany; a terra-cotta of Luca della Robbia, and that
would be a lily; a Madonna by Nero di Bicci, and that might have been a
rose; a few panels by Lippo Lippi, and they were from the convent
garden. In Via S. Margherita you come still upon a nosegay of such
country blossoms, growing still by the wayside--Madonna with St.
Anthony, S. Margherita, S. Costanza, and S. Stefano about her, painted
by Filippino Lippo, a very lovely shrine, such as you cannot find in
Florence, but which Prato seems glad to possess, on the way to the
country itself.

And since Prato is a child, there are about her many children;
mischievous, shy, joyful little people, who lurk round the coppersmiths,
or play in the old churches, or hide about the corridors of Palazzo
Comunale. And so it is not surprising that the greatest treasures of
Prato are either the work of children--the frescoes, for instance, of
Lippo Lippi and Lucrezia Buti in the Duomo--or the presentment of them,
yes, in their happiest moments; some dancing, while others play on
pipes, or with cymbals full of surprising sweetness, in the open-air
pulpit of Donatello; a pulpit from which five times every year a
delightful and wonderful thing is shown, not without its significance,
too, in this child-city of children--Madonna's Girdle, the Girdle of the
Mother of them all, shown in the open air, so that even the tiniest may
see.

The Duomo itself, simple and small, so that you may not lose your way
there, however little you may be, was built in 1317, though a church has
stood there apparently since about 750, while the facade, all in ivory
and green, is a work of the fifteenth century. Donatello's pulpit, for
which a contract was made in 1425 which named Michelozzo with him as one
of those _industriosi maestri_ intent on the work, is built into the
south-west corner of the church overlooking the Piazza. Almost a
complete circle in form, it is separated, unfortunately we may think,
into seven panels divided by twin pilasters, where on a mosaic ground
groups, crowds almost, of children dance and play and sing. It is