Pope in Avignon and are still in the Cathedral Church of
that city. A little while afterwards the men of the Company of
Orsanmichele, having collected large sums of money from offerings and
donations given to their Madonna by reason of the mortality of 1348,
resolved to make round her a chapel, or rather shrine, not only very
ornate and rich with marbles carved in every way and with other stones
of price, but also with mosaic and ornaments of bronze, as much as could
possibly be desired, in a manner that both in workmanship and in
material it might surpass every other work of so great a size wrought up
to that day. Wherefore, the charge of the whole being given to Orcagna
as the most excellent of that age, he made so many designs that finally
one of them pleased the authorities, as being better than all the
others. The work, therefore, being allotted to him, they put complete
reliance in his judgment and counsel; wherefore, giving the making of
all the rest to diverse master-carvers brought from several districts,
he applied himself with his brother to executing all the figures of the
work, and, the whole being finished, he had them built in and put
together very thoughtfully without mortar, with clamps of copper fixed
with lead, to the end that the shining and polished marbles might not
become discoloured; and in this he succeeded so well, with profit and
honour from those who came after him, that to one who studies that work
it appears, by reason of such union and methods of joining discovered by
Orcagna, that the whole chapel has been shaped out of one single piece
of marble. And although it is in a German manner, for that style it has
so great grace and proportion that it holds the first place among the
works of those times, above all because its composition of figures great
and small, and of angels and prophets in half-relief round the Madonna,
is very well executed. Marvellous, also, is the casting of the bands of
bronze, diligently polished, which, encircling the whole work, enclose
and bind it together in a manner that it is therefore as stout and
strong as it is beautiful in all other respects. But how much he
laboured in order to show the subtlety of his intellect in that gross
age is seen in a large scene in half-relief on the back part of the said
shrine, wherein, with figures of one braccio and a half each, he made
the twelve Apostles gazing on high at the Madonna, while she, in an oval
space, surrounded by