s monument was made these ancient works were
built into them and here and there gilded (for it is a wicked world
and there was no taste at that time). One's impulse is not to look
at this encroaching piece of novelty at all; but one should resist
that feeling, because, on examination, the Madonna and Children above
Signor Lombardi's head become exceedingly interesting. Her hands are
the work of a great artist, and they are really holding the Child. Why
this should not be an early Donatello I do not see.

The cloisters of S. Croce are entered from the piazza, just to the
right of the church: the first, a little ornate, by Arnolfo, and
the second, until recently used as a barracks but now being restored
to a more pacific end, by Brunelleschi, and among the most perfect
of his works. Brunelleschi is also the designer of the Pazzi chapel
in the first cloisters. The severity of the facade is delightfully
softened and enlivened by a frieze of mischievous cherubs' heads, the
joint work of Donatello and Desiderio. Donatello's are on the right,
and one sees at once that his was the bolder, stronger hand. Look
particularly at the laughing head fourth from the right. But that one
of Desiderio's over the middle columns has much charm and power. The
doors, from Brunelleschi's own hand, in a doorway perfect in scale,
are noble and worthy. The chapel itself I find too severe and a little
fretted by its della Robbias and the multiplicity of circles. It is
called Brunelleschi's masterpiece, but I prefer both the Badia of
Fiesole and the Old Sacristy at S. Lorenzo, and I remember with more
pleasure the beautiful doorway leading from the Arnolfo cloisters
to the Brunelleschi cloisters, which probably is his too. The
della Robbia reliefs, once one can forgive them for being here, are
worth study. Nothing could be more charming (or less conducive to a
methodical literary morning) than the angel who holds S. Matthew's
ink-pot. But I think my favourite of all is the pensive apostle who
leans his cheek on his hand and his elbow on his book. This figure
alone proves what a sculptor Luca was, apart altogether from the
charm of his mind and the fascination of his chosen medium.

This chapel was once the scene of a gruesome ceremony. Old Jacopo
Pazzi, the head of the family at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy
against the Medici, after being hanged from a window of the Palazzo
Vecchio, was buried here. Some short while afterwards Florence was
inu