Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/69

Rh the piers of brick. In that year, when the cliff of the Magnoli, undermined by water, sank down on the side of San Giorgio, above, on the Via de’ Bardi, the Florentines issued a decree, to the effect that no building should be thenceforward erected on that place, which they declared to be rendered perilous by the cause above stated ; herein they followed the counsels of Arnolfo, and his judgment has proved to be correct by the ruin in our day of many magnificent houses and other buildings. In the year 1285, Arnolfo founded the and, he rebuilt the principal chapel of the  (abbey) of Florence, with one on each side of it, restoring the church and choir, which had been constructed on a much smaller scale by Count Ugo, the founder of that abbey. For Cardinal Giovanni degli Orsini, the pope’s legate in Tuscany, Arnolfo erected the campanile of the above-mentioned church, a work highly appreciated in those times, and deservedly so ; but the stone-work of this tower was not completed until the year 1330. In the year 1294, the, belonging to the Friars Minors, was founded after the designs of Arnolfo, when he gave so ample an extent to the nave and side aisles of this building, that the excessive width rendered it impossible to bring the arches within the roof ; he therefore, with much judgment, raised arches from pier to pier, and on these he constructed the roofs, from which he conducted the water by stone gutters, built on the arches, giving them such a degree of inclination that the roofs were secured from all injury from damp. The novelty and ingenuity of this contrivance was equal to its utility, and well deserves the consideration of our day. At a later period, Arnolfo gave the plans for the first cloisters to the old convent of this church, and soon afterwards superintended the removal of the various arches and tombs, in stone and marble, by which the external walls of the were surrounded, placing a part of them behind the campanile, and on the façade of the Canonical Palace, near the oratory of San Zenobio ; he then covered the eight walls of the above-named church of San