CHAPTER ON E • DONATELLO 'S BRO NZ E PULPITS IN SAN LOREN Z O AND TH E EARLY CHRISTIAN REVIVAL T he pair of bronze pulpirs by Donarello in San a remarkable unity of functi on, meaning. and style." .i _Lorenzo in Florence, togeth er one of the seminal Functionally, the unity involved a return to the long works of ea rly Renaissance narrati ve scul pture, have obsolete custom of reading the Epistle and Gospel suffered a tragic farc, histori cally as well as histori ­ of the Mass from a pair of ambos, except that these ographica lly (Figs. 1-3). There is no conremporary were no rmally placed toward the mi ddle of the documentati on about them. We kn ow only from nave; rh e tradition is best exe mplified in the early Vespas iano da Bisricc i and Vasari that Cosima de' basi licas of Rome such as the Fl orenti ne church's Medici commissioned chern for San Lorenzo, whi ch own namesake, San Lorenzo fuori Ie mura ( Fig. 4 ). Brunelleschi had rebuilt for him into th e first new Themati call y, the un ity li es in a Christological nar­ basili ca of the Renaissance. The pulpits were Dona­ rative in whi ch the events of th e Pass ion-except rell o's lasr work, lefr unfinished ar his dea rh in 1466 the Last Supper-are pomayed on the left (facing and complered by ass isranrs. They were assembled th e altar), whil e the pos tpPass ion mi racles appear by the early sixteenth century and later attached to on the righe, In thi s pass ing fmm death to resurrec­ the pi ers at th e meeting of nave and transept, very ti on through the operation of th e Eucharist at the likely the location for which they wete ori ginally altar, Donatello's cycle is unique.2 In its bilateral intended. Early in the seventeenth ccowry they were confrontation of promise and fulfillment, however, moved to th eir present pos itio ns in the adj oining the ptogram tecalls the decorati ons of Eatly Chris­ nave arches. [ cian bas ilicas, in which Old Tesrament and New The pulpirs had been (as they conrinue to be) Tes ram enr narrarives Rank rh e nave. or rh e mosa ics the subject of a good deal of discussion about attri­ of Sanc'ApoUinare N uovo ar Ravenn a. where pre­ bution and dating-who did what when-until. Pass ion miracles confronr rhe Passio n. Fo rm ally. rh e in an article published nearly thirty years ago, I uniry consists in rh e sys remari c adoprion and adap­ argued that th ey are, after all, a coherent work of ration of more or less anti quared fea tures in th e art. Foclising primarily on th e pulpics' sources, my overall des ign of the pulpits as well as in the indi­ stud y "revealed, underlying their apparent di ve rsit ies , vidual scenes. Donatello rejected the polygo nal Fig. I. View in the crossing. San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Soprintendenza per i Bcni Arcistici e Storici, Florence 27). Fig. 2. Donatello, left pulpit. San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: B<ogi 8635). Fig. 3. Donatt.Uo, tight pulpit. San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Fig. 4 (oppositt, top). View in the nave toward the high altar. San Bragi 86Jo). Lorenzo fuori Ie mura, Rome (photo: Isrituto Centrale per a Catalogo e la Documentazione, R~me DI781). Fig. 5. Pulpit. San Leonardo in Atcetri, Florence (photo: Alinari JJ4I). shape currently in vogue for pulpirs in favor of the imagine San Lorenzo as the embodiment of a collective oblong format that had been neglecred for at least a ideal to recreate, in architecture, furnishings, as well as century (Fig. 5); and the design of the right pulpit, liturgy, a pristine Christianity.3 for example, clearly evokes early fourteenth-century sarcophagi like one by Tino di Camaino in Santa Since that article was published, it has become Croce (Fig. 6), where the Resurrection also occupies clear to me that while my eyesight was sharper in the center panel and is flanked by post-Passion mir­ those days, my mindsight was more myopic. In rhis acles. A striking case among the individual scenes egregiously belated postscript I shall rry to fit is the Three Marys at the Tomb (Fig. 7); for the together what I now see as the pieces of a large portrayal of the event as taking place within an and complex, indeed a cosmic, jigsaw puzzle. architectural setting, the nearest antecedents in Italy The largest piece in the puzzle appeared in an are found on the Tuscan Romanesque painted illuminaring talk entitled, significantly in our con­ crosses (Fig. 8). text, "Early Christian Topography in Florentine I concluded that Chronicles," given at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in 1985 by the historian the unity is essentially one of intent, which may be Charles Davis of Tulane University' Davis greatly defined as a concerted effort to resurrect the past and expanded our view of the late medieval history and relate it to the present in a new and meaningful way. self-image of what he called the "pushy" Tuscan The past is therefore both an end in itself and the metropolis of Florence. Italian city-states commonly means to convey a more effective spiritual message. The message may have been entirely Donatello's invention; magnified their own images by emphasizing real or or it may have been a joint product of the humanist imagined claims to the glories of ancient Rome. group surrounding Cosimo de' Medici, especially dur­ Studying the early chronicles, Davis found that in ing his later years, of which a leading goal was to rec­ Florence this history rhetoric acquired a special oncile antiquity with Christianity by returning to the dimension, topographical as well as figurative. Flor­ "early" phases of the Church. One is even tempted to ence was assimilated to the early Christian notion- 2 DonateLloJs 8ron{! Pulpits r ic was invenced by che early Chucch Fach ers-of a New Rome under ChciS[ superseding che old Rome of paganism. This grand religio-hiscorical idea emerges first in the anonymous Chroniea de origine civi­ tatis, wri tten about 1200. H ere Fl orence is said co have been founded originally as a miniature Rome wich capicol, am p h ic h ea c e ~ aq ueducrs, and the reS[, only co be destroyed five hundred years lacer by Tocila, King of che Ostrogochs. The cicy was chen rebuilc by Charlemagne in ch e im age of che New Rome, and this relacionship was specifically defin ed in the dedications and locations of the main churches . "JuS[ as che church of Sc. Pecer's is on one side of the city of Rome, so it is in the city o f Florence. And juS[ as che chucch of Sc. Paul is on che ocher side of che cicy of Rome, so ic is in che cicy of Flor­ ence. And just as the church of Sc. Lawrence che Martyr is on one side of che cicy of Rome and on the opposice side che chucch of Sc. Sce phen, so ic is in ch e cicy of Florence. And juS[ as on one side of che cicy of Rome is che church of Sc. John Lace ran, so is che main church of che cicy of Florence" ( Fig. 9). 5 Davis observed chac chis parall elis m wich Early Christian Rome was brought into even cl earer focus coward ch e middle of ch e fourteench ce ntury by Fig. 6. Tino di Camaino, tomb of Gasrone della Torre. Santa Cmce, Florence (photo: Bragi 3142). Fig. 7. Donatello, Marys al 11K Tomb, right pulpit. San Lorenzo, Florence (photo: Alinari 2216a). 4 Donattllo's Bron{! Pulpits ® + '000. N '" Fig. 9. Map of Florence showing. at c~ nte r, the Roman walls and locations of the churches: (1) San Pier Maggiore, (2) San Paolo (now San Paolino), (3) San Lorenzo, (4) Santo Stefano, (5) San Giovanni (after Braunfels, 1976, fig. 21 opp. p. 49; redrawn by Susanne Philippson Curcic). Fig. 8. Maryl at tlx 1Dmb, Cross no. 15. Museo Civico, Pisa (photo: Brogi 21350). Giovanni Vi llan i, whose Historia nova of Florence was "wested," that is, the high altar is at the west end of the historiographit al herald of the Renaissance. the building rather than at the east, as is usual for Villani gives an elaborate account of the layout of Christian churches. San Lorenzo shares this abnor­ the city as modeled on that of Rome, and once mality above all with the prototypical basilicas of again the churches are the chief points of reference, Rome, including St. Peter's and San Lorenzo fuori including again the analogy between the two San Ie mura itself in its original form, attributed to Lorenzos Juon it mura. 6 The theme recurs in Gore Constantine the Great. Closely related to this direc­ Dati's lstoria di FirenZ! of about 1410,7 and the strength tional peculiarity is an eq ually distinctive liturgical and persistence of the tradition may be gauged by a orientation that Brunell eschi introduced in his plan passage in Del Migliore's mid-seventee nth-century for San Lorenzo. It is well known that in des igning guide to Florence. The whole theme of Florentine Santo Spirito, Brunelleschi had [he radi cal notion of emulation of the succession of paganism by Chris­ separating the altars from the chapel walls so that tianity at Rome is focused on San Lorenzo.