GATES OF THE BAPTISTERY.
31
tion of this project, and preserved so fine a specimen of early
Florentine art from destruction.
The porphyry columns detached from the building, although
placed on either side of the Eastem Gates, were presented to
the Florentines by the Pisans, as a token of gratitude for the
protection afforded their city by Florence in 1114, when the
able-bodied male inhabitants of Pisa were absent on an expe¬
dition to rescue the island of Majorca from the Saracens. In
1424 the columns were swept down and broken by a flood from
the Mugnone, which then flowed near the church of San
Lorenzo. This event was supposed to be an evil augury for
the success of the Florentines in a war they had just com¬
menced against Filippo Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan. They
were, however, immediately restored to their former position.
The popular tale, that the Pisans ungratefully deceived the
Florentines, and injured the columns before sending them, is
without foundation, though immortalised in an old poem of
Antonio Pucci, on the wars between the Pisans and Florentines,
1362-1365. He concludes with these words :
Pisa con fuoco guastò le colonne,
Onde i Fiorentin ciechi fur chiamati.
Pisa spoiled the columns with fire,
Hence Florentines were called blind.
Over each of these three gates is a group in marble or
bronze. That over the northern gate is by Giovan Francesco
Rustici (1474-1554), a pupil of Andrea Verocchio, and a fellow-
pupil of Michael Angelo, as well as the intimate friend of
Leonardo da Vinci. When he received the commission for
this group, he turned for advice to Leonardo, who assisted him
in the choice of tools, but left him to his own genius for the
design and execution of the work ; nevertheless, its great
superiority to anything Rustici executed, before or since, has
caused many to attribute its excellence in part to his friend.
The subject is John the Baptist preaching to a Pharisee and