Giotto's bell tower is the bell tower of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, and is located in Piazza del Duomo.
Its foundations were dug around 1298 at the beginning of the
construction site of the new cathedral, when the master builder was
Arnolfo di Cambio. In 1334 Giotto di Bondone took over the role of
master builder. Vasari, in the Life of Giotto, refers to his arrival «in
the year 1334 on the 9th of July, at the bell tower of S. Maria del
Fiore», when he immediately began to deal with the construction of the
first floor of the bell tower, losing interest - according to what
Giovanni claims Villani - from the construction site of the basilica.
The unusual position of the bell tower, aligned with the facade,
reflects the desire to give it great importance as a sign of strong
verticality in the center of the Insula Episcopalis, in addition
probably to the practical need to free the view of the apse area for the
large dome, foreseen since Arnolfo project. Giotto provided an original
project for the bell tower, with a pyramidal cusp termination 50
Florentine arms (about 40 meters) high, according to which the total
elevation should have been about 120-125 meters. A drawing conserved in
the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Siena is considered by some scholars
to be inspired by this project.
The height of the bell tower
which can be visited by the public is still 85 meters and the number of
steps to climb to the top is 398 originals to which 15 must be added
which are part of the first access ramp.
Giotto
Giotto's
imprint is above all evident in the pictorialism of the extremely
refined cladding in white (coming from the quarries of Campiglia
Marittima and Pietrasanta), green (serpentino di Prato) and red
(Monsummano Terme, Siena, Stazzema) marbles, and above all in the
grandiose figurative cycle that adorns the base of the bell tower: a
series of representations that unite the bell tower with other great
feats of figurative sculpture such as the portals of Romanesque and
Gothic cathedrals (Arles, Fidenza, Chartres, Orvieto), but the closest
comparisons can be made with the reliefs of the Fontana Maggiore in
Perugia (1275-1278) by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano and those of the
Baptistery of Parma with the famous zoophorus by Benedetto Antelami
(about 1216).
Even if the critics have not recognized with
certainty the master's hand in any of the reliefs, his participation in
drawing up the iconographic program cannot be doubted.
When
Giotto died in 1337 only the first die was completed, and the structural
deficiencies of the project had already been highlighted: the anonymous
author of a 14th century Commentary on the Divine Comedy relates the
legend that Giotto had died of pain for having given the little bell
tower stump from foot... .
In fact, the most recent surveys
carried out on the bell tower would prove that the initial project
envisaged a wall thickness at the base of 1.60 metres, which would not
have allowed the tower to reach the expected height. Furthermore, above
the first level, Giotto had had a 24 cm offset (setback of the external
face of the walls) which reduced the thickness of the walls by almost
half a metre. In addition, the access staircase to the upper floors was
not projected - as is normally the case - overhanging the central well
of the structure, but excavated in the center of the walls, a solution
which made it possible to obtain a series of large and well-usable
rooms, but which further weakened the base.
Andrew Pisano
Giotto remained in charge of the building site until his death in 1337.
Giorgio Vasari mentions the painter Taddeo Gaddi as his immediate
successor, who is believed by some to have directed the thickening of
the walls within the first shelf; however in the documents of the Opera
del Duomo the only documented successor is Andrea Pisano, who had
already collaborated on the decorative furnishings of the bell tower.
Andrea Pisano continued the work, modifying the design on the
outside with the addition of two pilasters on each face, with the
intention of remedying the decrease in thickness due to the offset. A
single lancet window should probably have opened between the pilasters
(as seen in the drawing of the Opera del Duomo in Siena), to give light
to the reception room on the first floor.
Furthermore, the two
rooms superimposed on the one on the ground floor were made in false
form, ie not resting on the walls but on the vaults of the room below,
allowing to gain precious centimeters of wall thickness from the inside.
The structural modification worked very well, as the bell tower was able
to reach the expected 85 meters without further problems. The only
drawbacks remained the narrow space at the base of the bell tower and
the irregularity of the windows. Andrea Pisano directed the construction
site from 1337 to 1348. In the part built under his direction, the bell
tower has a series of ogival niches for a cycle of sculptures in the
round, better visible from below than the bas-reliefs.
An obscure mention of Antonio Pucci, a rhymer of the 1300s,
reports that Andrea Pisano lost his job as master builder due to
mistakes he made on the second level of the bell tower. It is not
very clear how credible this hint is, nor is there agreement on what
the errors attributed to him would have been; probably, during his
conduct of the works, it became necessary to resort to compromises
in order to continue the construction despite the defects of the
original plan.
The problem was the need for two different
scales. While one was used to reach the belfry and the top of the
bell tower, the second was reserved for access to the three large
rooms, of which the one on the ground and the one on the first floor
were to be used for representation purposes, rooms that boast
high-level finishes , ribbed vaults set on corner columns and
decorated keystones (on the ground floor with the Agnus Dei, coat of
arms of the Opera del Duomo, on the first floor with the heraldic
lily of Florence).
The two stairways should have avoided
crossing each other and therefore had to follow complicated routes:
moreover, there was concern about emptying the walls, which could
weaken the walls.
The point of greatest complexity is found
precisely at the height of the second nut of the bell tower: Andrea
managed to lead both stairways, but had to sacrifice the windows
that would have provided light to the hall on the first floor.
Instead of the designed single lancet window, he had to make do with
two reduced and irregular light openings. From the outside, the
openings would not have appeared symmetrical and so Andrea had to
resort to a trick, reducing the planned single lancet window in the
space between the pilasters to a thin strip (covered with a
perforated marble grille), and filling the unused space with two
more ogival niches slightly (revealing detail) narrower than the
others.
Francesco Talenti
The bell tower, after the
interruption of the works due to the black plague, was finished in
1359 by Francesco Talenti, who was able to complete the work more
easily as he no longer had to solve complex problems of statics,
solved well or badly by his predecessor. However, Francesco showed
great skill, organizing the construction as four massive corner
pillars connected by relatively thin wall diaphragms into which the
large windows open.
Now only one stairwell was needed, and
only one pillar could be used at a time, digging a helix staircase
to climb over the large windows (the helix is double on the top
floor to pass over the very high mullioned window). We owe him three
floors: the lowest two with a characteristic motif of coupled
mullioned windows, perhaps of Sienese origin; the last with the
belfry opened by huge three-mullioned windows with tympanum.
Above the cell was a projecting platform with a rich balustrade in
place of the cusp envisaged in Giotto's project: Vasari believes
that this choice was dictated by an early reaction against the
Gothic taste.
In the marble cladding of the top floor, slabs
of white marble with inlaid motifs of a Romanesque flavor were used,
perhaps reused pieces from the Baptistery building site. Francesco
later married Giotto's daughter right in the church next to the bell
tower.
It is said that during the initial phase in which the
bell tower was covered and decorated with the precious white, pink
and green marbles as well as with the sculptures performed by the
best chisels of the time, a citizen of Verona, fully aware of the
value that the work was assuming, he said that the Florentine
Republic could not afford the luxury of continuing to finance the
entire work. This superficial judgment offended the Signoria so much
as to inflict the imprudent Veronese two months in prison for
contempt. Having served his sentence, the gonfalonier Ruggeri
Calcagni, ordering his release, wanted however that before leaving
again, he was led to see the opulence of the public treasury in
order to make him aware of the effective solvency of the Florentines
who, not only could afford the luxury of performing the rich facing
to their bell tower, but they were thus able to face the entire
city.
Contemporary era
Giotto's bell tower is managed by
the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, which manages the related
museum, the Cathedral, the Baptistery and other monuments
overlooking the square. The organization not only deals with the use
of the museum, but is also responsible for the conservation,
restoration and ordinary maintenance of the buildings. In 2000,
tickets sold to climb the bell tower had been around 290,000, in
third place in terms of number of admissions after the Baptistery
(around 485,000) and Brunelleschi's dome (around 412,000).
The bas-reliefs of the base
Peculiar to the bell tower is the very
rich sculptural decoration, a complex iconographic program in which some
of the best sculptors present in Florence took part. All these works
which together constitute one of the most complete figurative cycles of
the Middle Ages have now been replaced with copies (the originals are
kept in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo).
The attribution of the
bas-reliefs is still the subject of discussion, however the opinion is
considered widely shared that the drawings may have sprung from a
programmatic idea of Giotto, while the execution (1337-1341) was
entrusted to Andrea Pisano and the his workshop: his collaborators
include his son Nino Pisano, Gino Micheli da Castello, Alberto Arnoldi,
Maso di Banco and the so-called Master of Armor and Master of Saturn;
five panels can be attributed to the later intervention of Luca della
Robbia (1437-39).
The bas-reliefs of the base, hexagonal at the
bottom, diamond-shaped at the upper level, represent:
West side
From left to right:
The Creation of Adam, by Andrea Pisano
The
Creation of Eve, by Andrea Pisano
The work of the ancestors, by
Andrea Pisano
Jabel or The invention of pastoralism, by Andrea Pisano
Iubal or The Invention of Music, by Andrea Pisano (or possibly Nino
Pisano)
Tubalcain or The invention of metallurgy, by Andrea Pisano
Noah or The invention of wine, by Andrea Pisano and help
Upstairs, in
the lozenges, the seven planets: Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn (from the workshop of Andrea Pisano, so-called Master of
Saturn, except Venus, perhaps by Nino Pisano).
South side
From
left to right:
Gionitus or The Art of Astronomy, by Andrea Pisano
The Art of Building, by Andrea Pisano
The Art of Medicine, by Andrea
Pisano
The Art of Horse Riding, by Andrea Pisano
The Art of
Weaving, by Andrea Pisano
Foroneo or The Art of Legislature, by
Andrea Pisano
Daedalus or The Art of Mechanics, by Andrea Pisano
Upstairs, in the lozenges, the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope,
Charity) and the Cardinal Virtues (Prudence, Justice, Temperance,
Fortitude), from the workshop of Andrea Pisano.
East side
From
left to right:
The Art of Rowing, by Andrea Pisano
Hercules and
Cacus or The Art of Justice, by Andrea Pisano
The Art of Cultivation,
by Andrea Pisano
The Chariot of Thespis or The Art of Teatrica, by
Andrea Pisano
Euclid or The Art of Architecture, by Andrea Pisano and
help
This face has only five panels for the opening, in the fifteenth
century, of the access door to the ground floor; the two panels removed
were moved to the first two places on the north side.
Upstairs,
in the lozenges, the Arts of the trivium (Grammatic, Dialectic,
Rhetoric) and of the Quadrivium (Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and
Astronomy), from the workshop of Andrea Pisano.
North side
This face, very close to the cathedral, was originally devoid of
hexagonal panels; when the bell tower door was opened, the two panels
with Painting and Sculpture were moved there, and in 1437 five panels
were commissioned from Luca della Robbia to complete the decoration.
From left to right:
Phidias or The Art of Sculpture, by Andrea
Pisano
Apelles or The Art of Painting, by Andrea Pisano
Elio
Donato (or Prisciano) or The Art of Grammar, by Luca della Robbia
Plato and Aristotle or The Art of Philosophy, by Luca della Robbia
Arion or Orpheus or The Art of Music, by Luca della Robbia
Euclid and
Pythagoras or The Art of Geometry and Arithmetic, by Luca della Robbia
Pythagoras or The Art of Harmony or Astrology, by Luca della Robbia
Upstairs, in the lozenges, the Seven Sacraments (baptism, penance,
marriage, sacred order, confirmation, Eucharist, anointing of the sick),
variously attributed to Alberto Arnoldi or Maso di Banco; in the lunette
of the ancient portal connecting with the cathedral, a Madonna with
Child by Andrea Pisano.
The choice of themes may seem conventional, as it does not emerge
from the traditional iconographic choices, but the differences in the
choice and representation are very evident. Antonio Paolucci believes
that the cycle wants to represent a narration of the Destiny of man and
his activities. Images from the book of Genesis are sculpted or
illustrated on numerous facades, Cycles of the Months with the
representation of man's activities are widespread (a very famous
example, the Portal of the Months in Ferrara; to stay close to Florence,
we find them in Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo).
In the western reliefs of
the bell tower, however, there is a curious originality in the treatment
of themes rigidly canonized elsewhere; the narration of the temptation
and the expulsion of the ancestors is missing, instead favoring work in
the fields; in Noah's drunkenness, there are no children who observe him
or try to cover his nakedness, and all attention is focused on the
magnificent vine, under which lies an accurately described barrel. The
intention therefore is to synthesize the biblical story and
representation of human creativity.
On the upper floor the
lozenges of the Planets, arranged according to the Ptolemaic model,
bring back to the calendar representations. Moving on to the south side
of the bell tower, the activities described are specialized, no longer
the primitive ones of the ancestors but those developed by human needs
and ingenuity. The human figure is absolutely the protagonist. The
Virtues of the upper floor are in direct relationship with work, through
man and his elevation.
On the side facing east, while other human
activities are celebrated, including agriculture and the theatre, with
the chariot of Thespis, ending with the representation of the architect
who raises his head to look at the Cathedral, there are above all
noteworthy are the lozenge-shaped panels which, representing the Arts of
the Trivium and the Quadrivium, are a celebration of the Studium, of the
newly opened University (1349) in nearby via dello Studio, which leads
almost in front of this side of the bell tower.
The north side
did not initially have a series of hexagonal reliefs, as an elevated
passage was the access to the bell tower from the cathedral. Instead, on
the upper floor, whoever walked through the passage was faced with the
reliefs of the seven Sacraments. When the walkway was removed and two
hexagonal panels became available (due to the opening of the current
door), another five panels were commissioned from Andrea della Robbia.
Who were, if any, the inspirers of this complex iconographic cycle?
Recent criticism seems oriented towards proposing only two names,
Vincenzo di Beauvais, who died in 1264, author of the treatise entitled
Specula in which he divides all celestial and human activities into four
mirrors, or Fra Remigio dei Girolami, a Dominican born in Florence and
still alive in the early fourteenth century, a pupil of St. Thomas
Aquinas and (perhaps) teacher of Dante.
On the upper level, Andrea Pisano created sixteen ogival niches (four
on each side; on the upper level, a frieze of similar blind niches) to
insert statues in the round. As in the lower level, the filling of the
niches continued beyond the end of the work on the bell tower, which
makes some of these statues masterpieces of the Renaissance.
The
sixteen statues of the third order have been found since 1937 in the
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo in Florence, while copies can be found
outside.
North side
These four statues were located until 1464
on the west side, the most important since it is contiguous to the
facade, but similarly to the door of Andrea Pisano of the Baptistery,
they were moved to make room for more appreciated Renaissance works, in
this case the sculptures by Donatello. The north side was instead the
least visible, as it was very close to the wall of the Cathedral. These
works, rather than statues in the round, can be considered highly
protruding high reliefs, rough on the back where the niche covered the
vision.
Sibilla Tiburtina, Nino Pisano (1337-1341)
David,
Andrea Pisano (1337-1341)
Solomon, Andrea Pisano (1337-1341)
Sibyl
of Eritrea, Nino Pisano (1337-1341)
West side
These four
sculptures, originally intended for the north side of the bell tower,
were the last four to be sculpted (1420-1435). When the work was
completed, the workers of the Duomo were so satisfied with the works
that they placed them on the west side, the most important, moving the
older ones by Andrea Pisano and his workshop.
Prophet Daniel,
Nanni di Bartolo (c. 1425, Donatello's signature on the base is
certainly later)
Prophet Habakkuk, Donatello (1434-1436)
Prophet
Jeremiah, Donatello (1427-1436)
Prophet Obadiah, Nanni di Bartolo (c.
1422)
South side
The four prophets of the south side are
characterized by a greater sense of volume and a more classical
inspiration than those of the immediately preceding north side, already
attributed to the late activity of Andrea Pisano, today they are partly
attributed to Maso di Banco and other artists of his circle, dated
between 1334 and 1341.
Prophet Moses, Maso di Banco
Prophet,
Nino Pisano
Prophet, Master of Armor
Prophet, Maso di Banco
East side
The four sculptors, dedicated to Prophets and
Patriarchs, were carved between 1408 and 1421.
Prophet
(Malachi?), by Donatello (1415-1418)
Prophet (Zechariah?), Nanni di
Bartolo (first quarter of the 15th century)
Abraham Sacrificing Isaac
by Donatello and Nanni di Bartolo, (1421)
Prophet (Isaiah?), by
Donatello (1418-1420)
The bell tower houses twelve bells: five ancient ones plus a concert
of seven for the liturgical service. The five disused bells are the
oldest of the previous concert of seven bells (of which the two largest
today were also part). In 1956 the cathedral chapter decided to redo the
wooden castle and on that occasion the Barigozzi foundry created the
five smaller bells for the new concert. The five ancient bells were
abandoned. The largest, called the Apostolica, built in 1405 by a
founder from Cortona (AR), weighing five thousand pounds, is today found
on the floor of the belfry. The four minor bells, namely the "Beona"
weighing 2760 pounds, the third bell "Maria Anna" weighing 2152 pounds,
the small bell, made in 1513, weighing 1400 pounds and finally the
smallest bell dating back to 1514 a thousand pounds, with the ancient
wooden jamming, have been installed high up in the large windows.
The actual concert consists of seven bells:
Campanone: also known
as Santa Reparata, it was made in 1705 by Antonio Petri, diameter 2.00
m, height 2.10 m, 5385 kg, note La2 (cracked in 1938, repaired by Renato
Monarini with special autogenous welding).
Misericordia: created by
Carlo Moreni in 1830, diameter 1.52 m, approx. 2320 kg, Note C3.
Apostolica: 1957, diameter 1.25 m, 1200 kg, Note Re3, cast by P.
Barigozzi
Annunziata: 1956, diameter 1.15 m, 856.5 kg, Note Mi3, cast
by P. Barigozzi
Mater Dei, 1956, diameter 95 cm, 481.3 kg, Note G3,
cast by P. Barigozzi
The Assumption, 1956, diameter 85 cm, 339.6 kg,
Note La3, cast by P. Barigozzi
L'Immacolata, 1956, diameter 75 cm,
237.8 kg, Note Si3, cast by P. Barigozzi