A man of universal genius was called in to execute the tabernacle:  Andrea Orcagna, a pupil probably of Andrea Pisano, and also much influenced by Giotto, whom though he had not known he idolized, and one who, like Michelangelo later, was not only a painter and sculptor but an architect and a poet.  Orcagna, or, to give him his right name, Andrea di Cione, for Orcagna was an abbreviation of Arcagnolo, flourished in the middle of the fourteenth century.  Among his best-known works in painting are the Dantesque frescoes in the Strozzi chapel at S. Maria Novella, and that terrible allegory of Death and Judgment in the Campo Santo at Pisa, in which the gay riding party come upon the three open graves.  Orcagna put all his strength into the tabernacle of Or San Michele, which is a most sumptuous, beautiful and thoughtful shrine, yet owing to the darkness of the church is almost invisible.  Guides, it is true, will emerge from the gloom and hold lighted tapers to it, but a right conception of it is impossible.  The famous miraculous picture over the altar is notable rather for its properties than for its intrinsic beauty; it is the panels of the altar, which contain Orcagna’s most exquisite work, representing scenes in the life of the Virgin, with emblematical figures interspersed, that one wishes to see.  Only the back, however, can be seen really well, and this only when a door opposite to it—­in the Via Calzaioli—­is opened.  It should always be open, with a grille across it, that passers-by might have constant sight of this almost unknown Florentine treasure.  It is in the relief of the death of the Virgin on the back that—­on the extreme right—­Orcagna introduced his own portrait.  The marble employed is of a delicate softness, and Orcagna had enough of Giotto’s tradition to make the Virgin a reality and to interest Her, for example, as a mother in the washing of Her Baby, as few painters have done, and in particular, as, according to Ruskin, poor Ghirlandaio could not do in his fresco of the birth of the Virgin Herself.  It was Orcagna’s habit to sign his sculpture “Andrea di Cione, painter,” and his paintings “Andrea di Cione, sculptor,” and thus point his versatility.  By this tabernacle, by his Pisan fresco, and by the designs of the Loggia de’ Lanzi and the Bigallo (which are usually given to him), he takes his place among the most interesting and various of the forerunners of the Renaissance.

Within Or San Michele you learn the secret of the stoned-up windows which one sees with regret from without.  Each, or nearly each, has an altar against it.  What the old glass was like one can divine from the lovely and sombre top lights in exquisite patterns that are left; that on the centre of the right wall of the church, as one enters, having jewels of green glass as lovely as any I ever saw.  But blues, purples, and reds predominate.