bowed.

At the last explosion the pyrotechnist, now a calm man once more
and a proud one, approached the car, the firemen poured water on
smouldering parts, and the work of clearing up began. Then came
the patient oxen, their horns and hooves gilt, and great masses of
flowers on their heads, and red cloths with the lily of Florence
on it over their backs--much to be regretted since they obliterated
their beautiful white skins--and slowly the car lumbered off, and,
the cocked hats relenting, the crowd poured after it and the Scoppio
del Carro was over.

The Duomo has a little sister in the shape of the Museo di Santa
Maria del Fiore, or the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, situated in the
Piazza opposite the apse; and we should go there now. This museum,
which is at once the smallest and, with the exception of the Natural
History Museum, the cheapest of the Florentine museums, for it
costs but half a lira, is notable for containing the two cantorie,
or singing galleries, made for the cathedral, one by Donatello and
one by Luca della Robbia. A cantoria by Donatello we shall soon see in
its place in S. Lorenzo; but that, beautiful as it is, cannot compare
with this one, with its procession of merry, dancing children, its
massiveness and grace, its joyous ebullitions of gold mosaic and blue
enamel. Both the cantorie--Donatello's, begun in 1433 and finished
in 1439, and Luca's, begun in 1431 and finished in 1438--fulfilled
their melodious functions in the Duomo until 1688, when they were
ruthlessly cleared away to make room for large wooden balconies to
be used in connexion with the nuptials of Ferdinand de' Medici and
the Princess Violante of Bavaria. In the year 1688 taste was at a low
ebb, and no one thought the deposed cantorie even worth preservation,
so that they were broken up and occasionally levied upon for cornices
and so forth. The fragments were collected and taken to the Bargello
in the middle of the last century, and in 1883 Signer del Moro, the
then architect of the Duomo (whose bust is in the courtyard of this
museum), reconstructed them to the best of his ability in their present
situation. It has to be remembered not only that, with the exception
of the figures, the galleries are not as their artists made them,
lacking many beautiful accessories, but that, as Vasari tells us,
Donatello deliberately designed his for a dim light. None the less,
they remain two of the most delightful works of the Renaissance and