The chapels in the left transept are less interesting, except perhaps to students of painting in its early days.  In the chapel at the end we find Donatello’s wooden crucifix which led to that friendly rivalry on the part of Brunelleschi, the story of which is one of the best in all Vasari.  Donatello, having finished this wooden crucifix, and being unusually satisfied with it, asked Brunelleschi’s opinion, confidently expecting praise.  But Brunelleschi, who was sufficiently close a friend to say what he thought, replied that the type was too rough and common:  it was not Christ but a peasant.  Christ, of course, was a peasant; but by peasant Brunelleschi meant a stupid, dull man.  Donatello, chagrined, had recourse to what has always been a popular retort to critics, and challenged him to make a better.  Brunelleschi took it very quietly:  he said nothing in reply, but secretly for many months, in the intervals of his architecture, worked at his own version, and then one day, when it was finished, invited Donatello to dinner, stopping at the Mercato Vecchio to get some eggs and other things.  These he gave Donatello to carry, and sent him on before him to the studio, where the crucifix was standing unveiled.  When Brunelleschi arrived he found the eggs scattered and broken on the floor and Donatello before his carving in an ecstasy of admiration.  “But what are we going to have for dinner?” the host inquired.  “Dinner!” said Donatello; “I’ve had all the dinner I require.  To thee it is given to carve Christs:  to me only peasants.”  No one should forget this pretty story, either here or at S. Maria Novella, where Brunelleschi’s crucifix now is.

The flexible Siena iron grille of this end chapel dates from 1335.  Note its ivy border.

On entering the left aisle we find the tombs of Cherubini, the composer, Raphael Morghen, the engraver, and that curious example of the Florentine universalist, whose figure we saw under the Uffizi, Leon Battista Alberti (1405-1472), architect, painter, author, mathematician, scholar, conversationalist, aristocrat, and friend of princes.  His chief work in Florence is the Rucellai palace and the facade of S. Maria Novella, but he was greater as an influence than creator, and his manuals on architecture, painting, and the study of perspective helped to bring the arts to perfection.  It is at Rimini that he was perhaps most wonderful.  Lorenzo de’ Medici greatly valued his society, and he was a leader in the Platonic Academy.  But the most human achievement to his credit is his powerful plea for using the vernacular in literature, rather than concealing one’s best thoughts, as was fashionable before his protest, in Latin.  So much for Alberti’s intellectual side.  Physically he was remarkable too, and one of his accomplishments was to jump over a man standing upright, while he was also able to throw a coin on to the highest tower, even, I suppose, the Campanile, and ride any horse, however wild.  At the Bargello may be seen Alberti’s portrait, on a medal designed by Pisanello.  The old medals are indeed the best authority for the lineaments of the great men of the Renaissance, better far than paint.  At South Kensington thousands may be seen, either in the original or in reproduction.