of design.  With his brother, Bernardo, he practised painting.  Like Giotto, he was no mean poet;[77] and like all the higher craftsmen of his age, he was an architect.  Though the church of Orsammichele owes its present form to Taddeo Gaddi, Orcagna, as capo maestro after Gaddi’s death, completed the structure; and though the Loggia de’ Lanzi, long ascribed to him by writers upon architecture, is now known to be the work of Benci di Cione, yet Orcagna’s Loggia del Bigallo, more modest but not less beautiful, prepared the way for its construction.  Of his genius as a painter, proved by the frescoes in the Strozzi chapel, I shall have to speak hereafter.  As a sculptor he is best known through the tabernacle of Orsammichele, built to enshrine the picture of the Madonna by Ugolino da Siena.[78]

In this monument Orcagna employed carved bas-reliefs and statuettes, intaglios and mosaics, incrustations of agates, enamels, and gilded glass patterns, with a sense of harmony so refined, and a mastery over each kind of workmanship so perfect, that the whole tabernacle is an epitome of the minor arts of mediaeval Italy.  The subordination of sculpture to architectural effect is noticeable; and the Giottesque influence appears even more strongly here than in the gate of Andrea Pisano.  This influence Orcagna received indirectly through his master in stone carving; it formed, indeed, the motive force of figurative art during his lifetime.  The subjects of the “Annunciation,” the “Nativity,” the “Marriage of the Virgin,” and the “Adoration of the Three Kings,” framed in octagonal mouldings at the base of the tabernacle, illustrate the domination of a spirit distinct both from the neo-Romanism of Niccola and the Gothicism of Giovanni Pisano.  That spirit is Florentine in a general sense, and specifically Giottesque.  Charity, again, with a flaming heart in her hand, crowned with a flaming brazier, and suckling a child, is Giottesque not only in allegorical conception but also in choice of type and treatment of drapery.

While admiring the tabernacle of Orsammichele, we are reminded that Orcagna was a goldsmith to begin with, and a painter.  Sculpture he practised as an accessory.  What the artists of Florence gained in delicacy of execution, accuracy of modelling, and precision of design by their apprenticeship to the goldsmith’s trade, was hardly perhaps sufficient to compensate for loss of training in a larger style.  It was difficult, we fancy, for men so educated to conceive the higher purposes of sculpture.  Contented with elaborate workmanship and beauty of detail, they failed to attain to such independence of treatment as may be reached by sculptors who do not carry to their work the preconceptions of a narrower handicraft.  Thus even Orcagna’s masterpiece may strike us not as the plaything of a Pheidian genius condescending for once to “breathe through silver,” but of a consummate goldsmith taxing the resources of his craft to form a monumental jewel.[79]