Near the Dante picture in the left aisle are two Donatellos--the
massive S. John the Evangelist, seated, who might have given ideas
to Michelangelo for his Moses a century and more later; and, nearer
the door, between the tablets to De Fabris and Squarciaparello, the
so-called Poggio Bracciolini, a witty Italian statesman and Humanist
and friend of the Medici, who, however, since he was much younger than
this figure at the time of its exhibition, and is not known to have
visited Florence till later, probably did not sit for it. But it is
a powerful and very natural work, although its author never intended
it to stand on any floor, even of so dim a cathedral as this. The
S. John, I may say, was brought from the old façade--not Arnolfo's,
but the committee's façade--where it had a niche about ten feet from
the ground. The Poggio was also on this façade, but higher. It was
Poggio's son, Jacopo, who took part in the Pazzi Conspiracy, of which
we are about to read, and was very properly hanged for it.

Of the two pictures on the entrance wall, so high as to be imperfectly
seen, that on the right as you face it has peculiar interest to
English visitors, for (painted by Paolo Uccello, whose great battle
piece enriches our National Gallery) it represents Sir John Hawkwood,
an English free-lance and head of the famous White Company, who
after some successful raids on Papal territory in Provence, put his
sword, his military genius, and his bravoes at the service of the
highest bidder among the warlike cities and provinces of Italy, and,
eventually passing wholly into the employment of Florence (after
harrying her for other pay-masters for some years), delivered her
very signally from her enemies in 1392. Hawkwood was an Essex man,
the son of a tanner at Hinckford, and was born there early in the
fourteenth century. He seems to have reached France as an archer under
Edward III, and to have remained a free-booter, passing on to Italy,