Daily life ground to a halt on July 24th as the citizens of Florence celebrated the life and death of John the Baptist, the city's patron saint. The festival began with the
mostra, as the city, its guilds, and people dressed in their finest apparel, which reflected well on their private households and their professional guild associations but also demonstrated their reverence for John the Baptist. Toted by these well-appointed Florentines were a host of relics and holy orders, paraded through the city on floats led by a procession of flag bearers representing the sixteen
gonfalone (neighborhoods) of Florence to the Baptistery of San Giovanni. This procession included members of individual patrician households who would make an offering at the Baptistery. This formal procession brought the different parts of the city together in a pan-Florentine celebration intended to diffuse any animosities between and among the guilds, neighborhoods, clergy, and government.
The festival was closed by a horserace called a
palio, with each
gonfalone (banner) supporting a horse that represented the neighborhood, adding a healthy dose of competition to the day’s proceedings. This race began at the Ponte alle Mosse and ended at the Piazza San Pier Maggiore. It was a complicated route, with many curves through the city streets that annually resulted in several casualties. The winner was rewarded with a
palio, a silk banner upon a pole, that the winning
gonfalone celebrated with pride until the next year’s race.
These large-scale spectacles were not the only entertainment at the festival, as many smaller events occurred simultaneously. Confraternities and guilds often performed or funded mini dramas for people to watch. Jousts were also popular, as well as a ball game called
calcio, dating back to the Romans and Greeks, which tied the festival of San Giovanni to the city’s ancient roots. Bonfires, a remnant of the festival of Mars, were lit throughout the city with
luminare, a decorative light display popular in Europe before the introduction of fireworks. Even the Piazza del Duomo was decorated with blue canopies adorned with silver stars.
The Feast Day of San Giovanni carried with it symbolic importance for the residents of Florence, and sometimes it came to be the chosen moment for an expression of public dissent. The parade of 1343 included a procession of laborers who had recently splintered from the potent Wool Guild to form their own nascent trade organization. The appearance of these separatists so outraged the public that it led to the downfall of the sitting
podestà, Walter of Brienne, the so-called Duke of Athen. In 1378, a
coup d’état led by the Ricasoli, Castiglionchio, and Albizzi families culminated in the general uprising known as the Ciompi Revolt, which ousted the entire republican apparatus and briefly resulted in a government formed by lower class workers. The revolt was suppressed – its ideals appropriated by opportunists and its leaders ultimately overthrown by a counter-revolt led by the local aristocracy – but the memory of this class-based rebellion lived on in the collective memory of the city for decades. The importance of the Feast Day of San Giovanni, both literally and symbolically, cannot be exaggerated.
By Margaret (Meg) Anne Coughlan
Bibliography:
Brucker, Gene A.
Florentine Politics and Society 1343-1378, New Jersey: 1962. 363.
Chrétien, Heidi L.
The Festival of San Giovanni: Imagery and Political Power in Renaissance Florence New York: 1994. 5-6, 32-35, 37, 41, and 42-44.
Hibbert, Christopher.
Florence: The Biography of A City, New York: 1993. 127.
Lucas-Dubreton, Jean.
Daily Life in Florence In the Time of the Medici, Trans. A. Lytton Sells. New York: 1961. 135.
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Page: https://3d.wlu.edu/v21/pages/Baptistery/Baptistery.html
Location of Annotation: -71.39, 156.02, -27.79
Camera Location: -84.041, 155.809, -31.939
Camera Looks Towards: -62.302, 162.167, -31.247
Annotation block name: The Doors of the Baptistry of San Giovanni: The North Door of Lorenzo Ghiberti
Annotation Details:
Lorenzo Ghiberti constructed two of the Baptistery’s three doors, with the first being this North door depicting the life of Christ and important church fathers. The
Arte del Calimala (the International Cloth Merchant’s Guild) commissioned Ghiberti in 1403 to compliment Andrea Pisano’s south door. These bronze reliefs, dedicated to scenes from the life of Christ and representations of the early Church Fathers and the Four Evangelists, mirror some of the scenes from the Baptistery’s ceiling, produced in mosaic one hundred years earlier. They were originally placed in the East doorway of the Baptistery facing the cathedral but were then moved to the North portal to make way for Ghiberti’s more elaborate and stylistically innovative
Gates of Paradise that were installed in 1452.
Ghiberti’s program focuses on scenes from the Infancy and Passion of Christ. As with Andrea’s south doors, Ghiberti produced twenty-eight panels in quatrefoil frames with two rows of effigies at the bottom. These figures represent the early Church Fathers (Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory, and Jerome) and the Four Evangelists. Unlike Andrea’s program, which must be read from top to bottom, Ghiberti’s cycle of bronze panels must be read bottom to top, culminating in the Passion sequence at the top of the door, looming over the viewer.
Ghiberti’s program focuses on the idea of Christ as savior and redeemer of mankind. The inclusion of Church Fathers and the Evangelists emphasizes this as the Evangelists recounted his acts and the Church Fathers elaborated upon doctrines of Christian orthodoxy, including Christ’s dual nature as both God and man. Forty-eight heads of prophets and prophetesses are at intersections of the bronze panels, reminding viewers of the promise of the Messiah and his sacrifice. This visual reminder of Christ and his sacrifice served to remind the viewer of the purpose of the Baptistery, which was at once to bring infants into both the covenant of Christ and the civic fold of Florence, creating a cohesive visual theme for the Baptistery of San Giovanni.
By Margaret (Meg) Anne Coughlan
Bibliography:
Bent, George R.
Public Painting and Visual Culture in Early Republican Florence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 255-56.
Brucker, Gene A.
Florence, the Golden Age, 1138-1737. New York: Abbeville Press, 2007. 88.
Paolucci, Antonio.
The Origins of Renaissance Art: The Baptistery Doors, Florence. Trans. Françoise Pouncey Chiarini. New York: George Brazier, 1996. 75.
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Page: https://3d.wlu.edu/v21/pages/Baptistery/Baptistery.html
Location of Annotation: -50.026, 174.685, -28.162
Camera Location: -54.356, 168.443, -28.481
Camera Looks Towards: -51.065, 174.496, -29.793
Annotation block name: Tomb of Baldassare Cossa (or Coscia), Pope John XXIII (1426-1428)
Annotation Details:
Donatello and Michelozzo began work on the tomb for the deposed Pope John XXIII, who had previously gone by the name of Baldassare Cossa or Coscia, sometime in 1425 or 1426. Cossa was a Neapolitan nobleman who, in 1410, had been elected one of three sitting popes during the Great Schism of the early fifteenth century. His reign ended in 1415 when the Council of Constance met to rescind the claims of all three competing pontiffs and elect a single, new authority that achieved general consensus. Cossa wound up in Florence, largely due to Medicean connections, where he died unexpectedly in 1419 at the age of 60. After some negotiations, the Arte della Calimala initiated the lengthy project to create a tomb suitable for the only pope buried in Florence. The bronze and marble sculpture of Cossa was completed in the spring of 1428 and marks the only sepulcher in the church of S. Giovanni, the Baptistery of Florence.
Problematically, Cossa, a foreigner, had died without a designated burial chapel or tomb. His bequest to the Baptistery of his most prized possession – the relic of St. John the Baptist’s index finger – suggests his intent to be buried in S. Giovanni. At first the executors of his will, who included Giovanni de’Medici and Niccolò da Uzzano, wished to build a chapel in the octagonal building, but in 1421 Palla Strozzi and other Cloth Guild officers dismissed the proposal, opting instead for a less conspicuous monument.
The first piece of this monument – a beautiful marble tomb slab – was installed in 1424 to mark the spot, and on it was etched the inscription, JOANNES QVONDAM PAPA XXIIIus. OBIIT FLORENTIE ANNO DOMINI MCCCCXVIIII XI KALENDAS IANVARII (“Here lies John XXIII, who was pope, and who died in Florence on the eleventh Kalend of January, 1419”). This seemingly benign epitaph allegedly rubbed the sitting pope the wrong way, for Martin V, the man who had overseen John’s deposition, interpreted its message to suggest that his predecessor had never actually relinquished his post, in turn suggesting that it was illegally taken from him. Martin seems to have felt threatened by its implications, even to the point of worrying about whether the powerful Florentines would accept his own claim to the seat of St. Peter. Martin demanded that this inscription be altered to clarify Cossa’s title as “Cardinal,” but his appeal was rejected by the Florentines with little debate.
There was for some time a debate over who or what corporate body commissioned the bronze effigy of Baldassare Cossa from Donatello and Michelozzo after the former pope’s death in 1419. The Signoria had designated the Baptistery as his final resting place, and the absence of any other tombs in S. Giovanni suggests that, in so doing, the government also took on the responsibility of paying for the tomb. Alternatively, Cossa’s nephews – who had received an abundant inheritance from their papal uncle – could have funded the marble sepulcher and its bronze effigy. However, copies of now-lost records from the Arte della Calimala confirm their role as patrons of the tomb, which seems to have cost them somewhere between 800 and 1000 florins.
Donatello had entered into a partnership with the goldsmith and future architect Michelozzo in 1425, and the two of them combined their skills to complete a number of projects over a ten-year period. Michelozzo’s tax declaration of 1427 specifies that the two were still working on the Cossa tomb project that summer, and that 600 of the 800 florins due to them had already been deposited into their accounts by the executors of Cossa’s estate. Michelozzo, however, could not say with confidence when the monument would be finished; in fact, it would take another year for the team to complete their work. In June 1428, the tomb was finally installed.
Despite their partnership, Donatello received most accolades. The brilliant tomb emerges from its wall niche, glowing from the sheen of the unusual combination of the two materials. The marble and bronze ensemble is framed by two massive columns that form its borders on either side. At the base appear the three Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity, each one carved in stone and occupying a classicizing niche articulated by fluted pilasters topped with Corinthian capitals and scallop shell arches behind them. Cossa’s coats of arms – including the papal shield of the Shield of St. Peter – separate the virtues from the actual tomb above, upon which one still sees the epitaph that so annoyed Martin V in 1424. Above the tomb appears the bronze figure of John XXIII, with his head adorned with a Bishop’s miter and resting on a pillow. Cossa, covered in a billowing robe that replicates the folds of magnificent draperies for which the International Cloth Merchants’ Guild was so famous, lays across a bed adorned with lion’s legs (an allusion, one believes, to the Throne of Wisdom occupied by King Solomon in the Old Testament). Above him hangs an ornate marble canopy, tinted with bronze fringes, that reveals the Virgin Mary holding either an image of the Christ Child, Cossa’s soul (in the form of a miniature adult), or a reference to both. There was no other sepulcher like it in Florence, or anywhere else in Italy: it is truly a tomb fit for a King – or, rather, in this case, a Pope.
Donatello’s naturalistic rendering of fabrics, figures, architectural motifs, and Cossa’s face marks a transitional moment in European tomb monument history. The fabric dangling from the baldacchino folds voluptuously and billows out from where it has been bunched together, additionally serving as a distinct symbol of John’s title and position, for all pontifical processions included a canopy that was held over the pope’s head as he was carted through the streets. Architectural elements only recently employed by Filippo Brunelleschi] in the Old Sacristy of S. Lorezno and employed by Donatello in his magnificent sculpture of S. Louis of Toulouse in the niche of Orsanmichele maintained by the Parte Guelfa bring into this essential space a modern taste that emphasizes the very latest trends in the visual arts. But most importantly, Baldassare Cossa’s facial features seem to be as lifelike a portrait as had been sculpted since the days of the ancient Roman Republic, with meticulous attention paid to the overall facial proportions and details of skin, whiskers, and brows. Perhaps Donatello lavished careful attention to Cossa’s features knowing that viewers would consider them in their fullest capacities, such as the tilt of Cossa’s head down and to the right, towards the middle of the Baptistery where the audience would stand and inspect Donatello’s work.
The tomb effigy of Baldassare Cossa, the former Pope John XXIII, was not Donatello’s first public commission, nor would it be his last; yet its naturalistic likeness to one of Europe’s most important figures makes it one of Donatello’s best, although oddly underappreciated, bronze sculptures in Florence.
By George Bent
Bibliography:
Lightbown, R.W. Donatello and Michelozzo: An Artistic Partnership and its Patrons in the Early Renaissance, vol.2 (London: Phaidon, 1980).
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