the ground by the Florentines when awaiting the siege of 1529. The
Cathedral façade was hastily removed, and only a fraction of the
statuary has survived. Two figures are in the Louvre; another has been
recently presented to the Cathedral by the Duca di Sermoneta, himself
a Caetani, of Boniface VIII., a portrait-statue even more remarkable
than that of the same Pope at Bologna. Four more figures from the old
façade, now standing outside the Porta Romana of Florence, are misused
and saddened relics. They used to be the major prophets, but on
translation were crowned with laurels, and now represent Homer,
Virgil, Dante and Petrarch. Other statues are preserved inside the
Cathedral. Before dealing with these it is necessary to point out how
difficult it is to determine the authorship and identity of the
surviving figures. In the first place, our materials for
reconstructing the design of the old façade are few. There were
various pictures, some of which in their turn have perished, where
guidance might have been expected. But the representations of the
Cathedral in frescoes at San Marco, Santa Croce, the Misericordia and
Santa Maria Novella help us but little. Up to the eighteenth century
there used to be a model in the Opera del Duomo: this also has
vanished, and we are compelled to make our deductions from a rather
unsatisfactory drawing made by Bernardo Pocetti in the sixteenth
century. It shows the disposition of statuary so sketchily that we can
only recognise a few of the figures. But we have a perfect idea of the
general style and aim of those who planned the façade, which would
have far surpassed the rival frontispieces of Siena, Pisa and Orvieto.
We are met by a further difficulty in identifying the surviving
statues from the fact that the contracts given to sculptors by the
Chapter do not always specify the personage to be represented.
Moreover, in many cases the statues have no symbol attribute or
legend, which usually guide our interpretation of mediæval art. Thus