rench,
at Crecy and Poitiers, and omitted to repay it.

The chapels in the left transept are less interesting, except perhaps
to students of painting in its early days. In the chapel at the end
we find Donatello's wooden crucifix which led to that friendly rivalry
on the part of Brunelleschi, the story of which is one of the best in
all Vasari. Donatello, having finished this wooden crucifix, and being
unusually satisfied with it, asked Brunelleschi's opinion, confidently
expecting praise. But Brunelleschi, who was sufficiently close a friend
to say what he thought, replied that the type was too rough and common:
it was not Christ but a peasant. Christ, of course, was a peasant;
but by peasant Brunelleschi meant a stupid, dull man. Donatello,
chagrined, had recourse to what has always been a popular retort to
critics, and challenged him to make a better. Brunelleschi took it very
quietly: he said nothing in reply, but secretly for many months, in
the intervals of his architecture, worked at his own version, and then
one day, when it was finished, invited Donatello to dinner, stopping
at the Mercato Vecchio to get some eggs and other things. These he
gave Donatello to carry, and sent him on before him to the studio,
where the crucifix was standing unveiled. When Brunelleschi arrived he
found the eggs scattered and broken on the floor and Donatello before
his carving in an ecstasy of admiration. "But what are we going to
have for dinner?" the host inquired. "Dinner!" said Donatello; "I've
had all the dinner I require. To thee it is given to carve Christs:
to me only peasants." No one should forget this pretty story, either
here or at S. Maria Novella, where Brunelleschi's crucifix now is.

The flexible Siena iron grille of this end chapel dates from 1335. Note
its ivy border.

On entering the left aisle we find the tombs of Cherubini, the
composer, Raphael Morghen, the engraver, and that curious example of
the Florentine universalist, whose figure we saw under the Uffizi,
Leon Battista Alberti (1405-1472), architect, painter, author,
mathematician, scholar, conversationalist, aristocrat, and friend of
princes. His chief work in Florence is the Rucellai palace and the
facade of S. Maria Novella, but he was greater as an influence than
creator, and his manuals on architecture, painting, and the study of
perspective helped to bring the arts to perfection. It is at Rimini
that he was perhaps most wonderful. Lorenzo de' Me