In turning now to the Campanile, which Giotto began in 1334, on the site of a chapel of S. Zenobio, we come to the last building of the great group.  Fair and slim as a lily, as light as that, as airy and full of grace, to my mind at least it lacks a certain stability, so that looking on it I always fear in my heart lest it should fall.  It seems to lack roots, as it were, yet by no means to want confidence or force.  Can it be that, after all, it would have seemed more secure, more firm and established, if the spire Giotto designed for it had in truth been built?  The consummate and supreme artist, architect, sculptor, and painter was not content to design so fair, so undreamed-of a flower as this, but set himself to make the statues and the reliefs that were necessary also.  And then has he not built as only a painter could have done, in white and rose and green?  He died too soon to see the fairest of his dreams, and it is really to two other artists—­Taddeo Gaddi and Francesco Talenti—­that the actual work, after the first five storeys—­those windows, for instance, that add so much to the beauty of the tower—­is owing.[91]

[Illustration:  THE MADONNA DELLA CINTOLA

By Nanni di Banco.  Duomo, Florence

Alinari]

The reliefs that, set some five-and-twenty feet from the ground, are so difficult to see, are the work of Andrea Pisano, the sculptor of the south gate of the Baptistery.  Born at Pontedera, the pupil of Giovanni Pisano, this great and lovable artist has been robbed of much that belongs to him.  Vasari tells us—­and for long we believed him—­that Giotto helped him to design the gate of the Baptistery; and again, that Giotto designed these reliefs for Andrea to carve and found.  It might seem impossible to believe that the greatest sculptor then living, fresh from a great triumph, would have consented to use the design of a painter, even though he were Giotto.  However this may be, the reliefs really speak for themselves:  those on the south side—­early Sabianism, house-building, pottery, training horses, weaving, lawgiving, and exploration—­are certainly by Andrea; while among the rest the Jubal, the Creation of Man, the Creation of Woman, seem to be his own among the work of his pupils.  It is to quite another hand, however, to Luca della Robbia, that the Grammar, Poetry, Philosophy, Astrology, and Music must be given.  The genius of Andrea Pisano, at its best in those Baptistery gates, in the panel of the Baptism of our Lord, for instance, or in those marvellous works on the facade of the Duomo at Orvieto, so full of force, vitality, and charm, is, as I think, less fortunate in its expression when he is concerned with such work as these statues of the prophets in the niches on the south wall of the Campanile,—­if indeed they be his.  Seen as these figures are, beside the large, splendid, realistic work of Donatello, so wonderfully ugly in the Zuccone, so pitiless in the Habakkuk, they are quickly forgotten; but indeed Donatello’s work seems to stand alone in the history of sculpture till the advent of Michelangelo.