our of the betrothal
of Lorenzo to Clarice Orsini. The Queen of the tournament was Lucrezia
Donati, and she awarded the first prize to Lorenzo. The tournament cost
10,000 gold florins and was very splendid, Verrocchio and other artists
being called in to design costumes, and it is thought that Pollaiuolo's
terra-cotta of the Young Warrior in the Bargello represents the comely
Giuliano de' Medici as he appeared in his armour in the lists. The
piazza was the scene also of that famous tournament given by Lorenzo
de' Medici for Giuliano in 1474, of which the beautiful Simonetta
was the Queen of Beauty, and to which, as I have said elsewhere, we
owe Botticelli's two most famous pictures. Difficult to reconstruct
in the Piazza any of those glories to-day.

The new facade of S. Croce, endowed not long since by an Englishman,
has been much abused, but it is not so bad. As the front of so
beautiful and wonderful a church it may be inadequate, but as a
structure of black and white marble it will do. To my mind nothing
satisfactory can now be done in this medium, which, unless it is
centuries old, is always harsh and cuts the sky like a knife, instead
of resting against it as architecture should. But when it is old,
as at S. Miniato, it is right.

S. Croce is the Westminster Abbey of Florence. Michelangelo lies here,
Machiavelli lies here, Galileo lies here; and here Giotto painted,
Donatello carved, and Brunelleschi planned. Although outside the church
is disappointing, within it is the most beautiful in Florence. It
has the boldest arches, the best light at all seasons, the most
attractive floor--of gentle red--and an apse almost wholly made of
coloured glass. Not a little of its charm comes from the delicate
passage-way that runs the whole course of the church high up on the
yellow walls. It also has the finest circular window in Florence,
over the main entrance, a "Deposition" by Ghiberti.

The lightness was indeed once so intense that no fewer than twenty-two
windows had to be closed. The circular window over the altar upon which
a new roof seems to be intruding is in reality the interloper: the roof
is the original one, and the window was cut later, in defiance of good
architecture, by Vasari, who, since he was a pupil of Michelangelo,
should have known better. To him was entrusted the restoration of
the church in the middle of the sixteenth century.

The original architect of the modern S. Croce was the same Arnolfo di