With its three naves marked by pilasters and columns,
the cathedral is the richest of all the churches in the city both
for its religious furnishings and its various kinds of decoration.
On the indoor wall of the façade, there are three low reliefs: in
the center is the Bishop Atto giving the benediction between two
angels; to the sides are panels dealing with the mission of Teobaldo
and Mediovillano to fetch the relic of San Jacopo from Spain (
vs33).
Carved for the occasion when Atto's body was brought to the cathedral
from the baptistery, the sculptures are similar in style to the
work of the Sienese artists Agostino di Giovanni and Giovanni d'Agostino.
The first two spans of the right-hand nave were occupied by the
Chapel of San Jacopo, built in the mid twelfth century by the Bishop
Atto as the site of the Saint's reliquary. The chapel was separated
from the rest of the cathedral by a gate and its floor level was
higher than the church's floor. Until Bishop Scipione de' Ricci
(
vs20) ordered the chapel
to be dismantled, it housed both the silver altar (
vs33)
and the precious liturgical objects now in the Cathedral Museum
(
vs48).High up on the
wall of the south nave, we see the funerary monument to Cino Sinibuldi
da Pistoia, the man of law and letters. The monument is another
fourteenth century piece that has been attributed to Agostino di
Giovanni and Giovanni d'Agostino. It takes the form of a sarcophagus
underneath a niche with arches while above there is a tabernacle
with the Virgin, Child, and Saints Jacopo and Zeno. Underneath Cino
is portrayed seated and teaching his students. The two people represented
in the lower relief are, according to legend, Petrarch and Selvaggia
Vergiolesi, the girl that Cino loved.
Further along the nave we find the large Crucifix painted at the
end of the 1200s by Coppo di Marcovaldo and his son Salerno. Just
after this is the Chapel of the Crucifix which has housed the silver
altar since 1953. Beyond this there is one flight of stairs leading
to the presbytery area and another leading to the crypt where recent
archaeological excavations have brought to light the foundations
of the small southern apse of the ancient Romanesque church. Jacopo
Lafri's presbytery was decorated, beginning in 1 599, by Passignano
who worked on the vault and Gregorio Pagani and Benedetto Veli,
well qualified Florentine painters of the early seventeenth century
who worked on the walis.. In front of the presbytery chapel we find
the fifteenth century bronze candelabra, a remarkable work by Maso
di Bartolomeo. To the left of the high altar the Renaissance chapel
of San Donato houses an important panel: the Virgin and Child Enthroned
with John the Baptist and Saint Zeno, a masterpiece of late Florentine
Quattrocento painting that has been attributed to Lorenzo di Credi.
Descending the stairs that bring us back to the level of the nave,
we see a stairway to the left that - like the one on the right-hand
side - leads down to the crypt. Here live find, among the stone
remains, two carved marble panels that belonged to the church's
Romanesque pulpits as well as a barbarian capital that perhaps comes
from the first ancient building
(vs31).
At the end of the north nave we find the funerary monument to Cardinal
Forteguerri (
vs19) that
Verocchio worked on.
(n.) refers to the number of the file-card (s.i.) means see information
inside
