iding a casket
worthy of holding such a pictorial treasure. Hence came about the
noble edifice of to-day.

A man of universal genius was called in to execute the tabernacle:
Andrea Orcagna, a pupil probably of Andrea Pisano, and also much
influenced by Giotto, whom though he had not known he idolized,
and one who, like Michelangelo later, was not only a painter and
sculptor but an architect and a poet. Orcagna, or, to give him his
right name, Andrea di Cione, for Orcagna was an abbreviation of
Arcagnolo, flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century. Among
his best-known works in painting are the Dantesque frescoes in the
Strozzi chapel at S. Maria Novella, and that terrible allegory of
Death and Judgment in the Campo Santo at Pisa, in which the gay riding
party come upon the three open graves. Orcagna put all his strength
into the tabernacle of Or San Michele, which is a most sumptuous,
beautiful and thoughtful shrine, yet owing to the darkness of the
church is almost invisible. Guides, it is true, will emerge from the
gloom and hold lighted tapers to it, but a right conception of it is
impossible. The famous miraculous picture over the altar is notable
rather for its properties than for its intrinsic beauty; it is the
panels of the altar, which contain Orcagna's most exquisite work,
representing scenes in the life of the Virgin, with emblematical
figures interspersed, that one wishes to see. Only the back, however,
can be seen really well, and this only when a door opposite to it--in
the Via Calzaioli--is opened. It should always be open, with a grille
across it, that passers-by might have constant sight of this almost
unknown Florentine treasure. It is in the relief of the death of the
Virgin on the back that--on the extreme right--Orcagna introduced
his own portrait. The marble employed is of a delicate softness, and
Orcagna had enough of Giotto's tradition to make the Virgin a reality
and to interest Her, for example, as a mother in the washing of Her
Baby, as few painters have done, and in particular, as, according
to Ruskin, poor Ghirlandaio could not do in his fresco of the birth
of the Virgin Herself. It was Orcagna's habit to sign his sculpture
"Andrea di Cione, painter," and his paintings "Andrea di Cione,
sculptor," and thus point his versatility. By this tabernacle, by
his Pisan fresco, and by the designs of the Loggia de' Lanzi and the
Bigallo (which are usually given to him), he takes his place amon