The S. Croce pulpit, which is by Benedetto da Maiano, is a satisfying thing, accomplished both in proportions and workmanship, with panels illustrating scenes in the life of S. Francis.  These are all most gently and persuasively done, influenced, of course, by the Baptistery doors, but individual too, and full of a kindred sweetness and liveliness.  The scenes are the “Confirmation of the Franciscan Order” (the best, I think); the “Burning of the Books”; the “Stigmata,” which we shall see again in the church, in fresco, for here we are all dedicated to the saint of Assisi, not yet having come upon the stern S. Dominic, the ruler at S. Marco and S. Maria Novella; the “Death of S. Francis,” very real and touching, which we shall also see again; and the execution of certain Franciscans.  Benedetto, who was also an architect and made the plan of the Strozzi palace, was so unwilling that anything should mar the scheme of his pulpit, that after strengthening this pillar with the greatest care and thoroughness, he hollowed it and placed the stairs inside.

The first tomb on the right, close to this pulpit, is Michelangelo’s, a mass of allegory, designed by his friend Vasari, the author of the “Lives of the Artists,” the reading of which is perhaps the best preparation for the understanding of Florence.  “If life pleases us,” Michelangelo once said, “we ought not to be grieved by death, which comes from the same Giver.”  Michelangelo had intended the Pieta, now in the Duomo, to stand above his grave; but Vasari, who had a little of the Pepys in his nature, thought to do him greater honour by this ornateness.  The artist was laid to his rest in 1564, but not before his body was exhumed, by his nephew, at Rome, where the great man had died, and a series of elaborate ceremonies had been performed, which Vasari, who is here trustworthy enough, describes minutely.  All the artists in Florence vied in celebrating the dead master in memorial paintings for his catafalque and its surroundings, which have now perished; but probably the loss is not great, except as an example of homage, for that was a bad period.  How bad it was may be a little gauged by Vasari’s tributory tomb and his window over the high altar.

Opposite Michelangelo’s tomb, on the pillar, is the pretty but rather Victorian “Madonna del Latte,” surrounded by angels, by Bernardo Rossellino (1409-1464), brother of the author of the great tomb at S. Miniato.  This pretty relief was commissioned as a family memorial by that Francesco Nori, the close friend of Lorenzo de’ Medici, who was killed in the Duomo during the Pazzi conspiracy in his effort to save Lorenzo from the assassins.