throes, bite the hanging Francesco de Pazzi.  Old Jacopo succeeded in escaping, but not for long, and a day or so later he too was hanged.  Bandini got as far as Constantinople, but was brought back in chains and hanged.  The two priests hid in the Benedictine abbey in the city and for a while evaded search, but being found they were torn to pieces by the crowd.  Montesecco, having confessed, was beheaded in the courtyard of the Bargello.

The hanging of the chief conspirators was kept in the minds of the short-memoried Florentines by a representation outside the Palazzo Vecchio, by none other than the wistful, spiritual Botticelli; while three effigies, life size, of Lorenzo—­one of them with his bandaged neck—­were made by Verrocchio in coloured wax and set up in places where prayers might be offered.  Commemorative medals which may be seen in the Bargello, were also struck, and the family of Pazzi was banished and its name removed by decree from the city’s archives.  Poor Giuliano, who was generally beloved for his charm and youthful spirits, was buried at S. Lorenzo in great state.

I have often attended High Mass in this Duomo choir—­the theatre of the Pazzi tragedy—­but never without thinking of that scene.

Luca della Robbia’s doors to the new sacristy, which gave the young cardinal his safety, had been finished only eleven years.  Donatello was to have designed them, but his work at Padua was too pressing.  The commission was then given to Michelozzo, Donatello’s partner, and to Luca della Robbia, but it seems likely that Luca did nearly all.  The doors are in very high relief, thus differing absolutely from Donatello’s at S. Lorenzo, which are in very low.  Luca’s work here is sweet and mild rather than strong, and the panels derive their principal charm from the angels, who, in pairs, attend the saints.  Above the door was placed, at the time of Lorenzo’s escape, the beautiful cantoria, also by Luca, which is now in the museum of the cathedral, while above the door of the old sacristy was Donatello’s cantoria.  Commonplace new ones now take their place.  In the semicircle over each door is a coloured relief by Luca:  that over the bronze doors being the “Resurrection,” and the other the “Ascension”; and they are interesting not only for their beauty but as being the earliest-known examples in Luca’s newly-discovered glazed terra-cotta medium, which was to do so much in the hands of himself, his nephew Andrea, and his followers, to make Florence still lovelier and the legend of the Virgin Mary still sweeter.  But of the della Robbias and their exquisite genius I shall say more later, when we come to the Bargello.