Yet little though there be to interest the curious, Giovanni Acuto, that Englishman Sir John Hawkwood of the White Company, one of the first of the Condottieri, the deliverer of Pisa, “the first real general of modern times,” is buried here.  You may see his equestrian portrait by Paolo Uccello over the north-west doorway in his habit as he lived.  Having fought against the Republic and died in its service, he was buried here with public honours in 1394.  And then in the north aisle you may see the statue called a portrait of Poggio Bracciolini[89] by Donatello.  Donatello carved a number of statues, of which nine have been identified, for the Opera del Duomo, three of these are now in the Cathedral:  the Poggio, the so-called Joshua in the south aisle, which has been said to be a portrait of Gianozzo Manetti; and the St. John the Evangelist in the eastern part of the nave.  The Poggio certainly belongs to the series:  it would be delightful if the cryptic writing on the borders of the garment were to prove it to be the Job.  The St. John Evangelist is an earlier work than the Poggio; it was begun when Donatello was twenty-two years old, and, as Lord Balcarres says, “it challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the Moses of Michelangelo.”  It was to have stood on one side of the central door.  Something of the wonder of this work in its own time may be understood if we compare it, not with the later work of Michelangelo, but with the statues of St. Mark by Niccolo d’Arezzo, the St. Luke of Nanni di Banco, and the St. Matthew of Bernardo Ciuffagni, which were to stand beside it and are now placed in a good light in the nave, while the work of Donatello is almost invisible in this dark apsidal chapel.  Of the other works which Donatello made for the Opera del Duomo, the David is in the Bargello, while the Jeremiah, and Habbakuk, the so-called Zuccone, the Abraham, and St. John Baptist are still on the Campanile.

The octagonal choir screens carved in relief by Baccio Bandinelli, whom Cellini hated so scornfully because he spoke lightly of Michelangelo, will not keep you long; but there behind the high altar is an unfinished Pieta by Michelangelo himself.  It is a late work, but in that fallen Divine Figure just caught in Madonna’s arms you may see perhaps the most beautiful thing in the church, less splendid but more pitiful than the St. John of Donatello, but certainly not less moving than that severe, indomitable son of thunder.  Above, the dome soars into heaven; that mighty dome, higher than St. Peter’s, the despair of Michelangelo, one of the beauties of the world.  One wanders about the church looking at the bronze doors of the Sagrestia Nuova, or the terra-cottas of Luca della Robbia, always to return to that miracle of Brunellesco’s.  Not far away in the south aisle you come upon his monument with his portrait in marble by Buggiano.  The indomitable persistence of the face!  Is it any wonder that, impossible as his dream appeared,