The column with the statue of Plenty today called Colonna dell’Abbondanza or formerly Colonna della Dovizia (Column of Abundance), which stands in the center of Florence, in Piazza della Repubblica, is the same one which at one time was at the center of the Baptistry and supported the dreaded ‘statue of Mars’ noted by Dante.
Here’s why.
A few of the very few who are familiar with my ideas about the origins of the Baptistry of San Giovanni – which is that it is not a Romanesque monument, but a Roman one, just according to the oldest Florentine legends – already know that one day, while I was looking at the Column of Abundance, it suddenly occurred to me that that column was the same one that had been placed in the center of the Baptistry to support on its capital the famous statue of Mars that is recorded by Dante in The Divine Comedy. Having done some follow-up investigation without finding elements contrary to my idea, I mentioned it in a brief publication on the origins of San Giovanni.[1] In my opinion, everything must have begun in 406, when at the slopes of Fiesole ended in a massacre the invasion of the king of the Goths, Radagaisus, who was defeated by the Roman army led by Stilicone. After that the Florentines, as Giovanni Villani writes [2], “commissioned to be done in the city a marvelous temple in honor of the god Mars” in memory of the event. And so, Florence got what after became its Baptistry. In those years between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century, the community of the city was marked by deep contrasts between Catholics, Aryans and pagans, given that each group sought to make its own claim. The Catholics, as soon as the construction of the Temple was finished, took immediate possession of it so they could make it into a church, and because of this they removed the statue and brought it to the Ponte Vecchio. The marble pieces of the shrine that surrounded it, instead, because of their worth, were dismantled and stored nearby, until in 1150 they were repurposed and modified to create the current lantern of the monument.
But also the column that supported the statue must have met a similar end, because I soon discovered that my idea about its connection to the column in Piazza della Repubblica was not new, as it had already been proposed in the 1500s. I will now attempt to summarize the question by availing myself of the information provided in by a fine essay by Margaret Haines.[3]
Today everyone agrees that the column is Roman, and it is certain that in 1429 it was lying since time immemorial at the foot of Giotto’s belltower. Then, in that year, the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore granted it, in exchange with some warehouses existing in the Old Market, to the Officers of the Tower, meaning the proposed legal authorities for the management of the city’s public spaces, who intended to use it for what would today be called a street furniture intervention which planned to place it in the Market and put a statue on top of it that would represent Plenty, which Donatello had already been commissioned to carry out. But Donatello was famous for his sluggishness, hence it was only after several reminders that he delivered the statue in 1430, and so the plan could be completed. The expectations of the commissioners despite of the delays, mean that the column and the statue were part of a single project just from the beginning, a project which foresaw a significant expense because the transaction was done in exchange for some warehouses, and also because such a beautiful column was very valuable and because they had hired the best sculptor.[4]
At this point we must embark on another topic regarding what the relationship of the column with the Baptistry is. This column (let’s call it ‘Column A’) is clearly similar in proportions and material (granite, probably from Elba island) with the other twelve columns (‘B’) of the bottom interior order of San Giovanni, but it has a height lower about 25 cm in comparison to them. According to ancient tales, this column ‘A’ was originally placed just to the left when you enter from the Gates of Paradise; from there it would have been removed and substituted with the fluted column there now (‘C’), which is made with white marble like the other ‘C’ that’s on the right when you enter. And here we have a confused mix of coincidences: the ‘C Columns’ have the same size and proportions as the ‘B’ but different materials, while the ‘A’ is in the same material but does not have the same height. According to the legends, and endorsed by various authors in the 1500s (Albertini, Borghini, Vasari), ‘Column A’ would have been just the one that supported the statue of Mars in the center of the Temple and that was removed by the Christian Florentines.[5] Today scholars, however, although they don’t object to the fact that the ‘C Columns’ are antique and placed in San Giovanni in the Christian period, when it comes to explaining why they are different from the B Columns, they say they are sourced from lost monuments from Roman Florence or its vicinities.
But this claim doesn’t hold water. It is, in fact, impossible to believe that some recovered columns could have been inserted with such exact measures and harmonious proportions, despite the difference of the material, in a highly calibrated formal context like that of San Giovanni; and moreover, in Florence or its outskirts no traces have ever been found of some Roman building that could have had similar columns, not even in the city Capitol. Even more incredible is the idea that these columns could have substituted previous ones, because there was no reason to make a transformation clearly detrimental from an aesthetic perspective and that would have posed a great risk to the stability of the dome, and of which – what is more – no traces in the walls were found, which instead would have inevitably happen. [6] Some other observations could be made, but let’s stop here and try a logical explanation, that there is. We can derive it precisely from the Florentine legends, which under a cloak of fancies hide some elements of truth.
Thus, here’s how the events could have unfolded.
Originally Column A and the statue of Mars were at the center of the Temple. Both were removed when the Temple became a church, because they obstructed the space and also because the statue seemed a pagan symbol. But it is important to add a detail that isn’t considered by scholars, which is that the statue was not only a symbol of victory, but also a symbol of peace and prosperity: this was documented very clearly by some finds in excavations in the 1800s, which documented the rituals of the Temple foundation but were not recognized by the archeologists at the time. It’s hard to believe, but it is true, and it’s even more incredible that since then no one has done any check investigation on the excavations reports of the time or about the remains that are still visible under the Baptistry.
The statue was not only a symbol of war (Mars, who anyway was the Emperor himself in the guise of a warrior) but also the wish of a better future for the people after their narrow escape from danger, and all these concepts were certainly ingrained in the memories of the people and the intellectuals up in the Renaissance even, and it is just this that Leonardo Bruni thought about when he laid out the plan to redevelop the old market. Margaret Haines sensed this when she wrote that the plan “in all probability understood from its inception the idea of the allegorical figure of Plenty, almost as a virtue personified by the goddess, but also as a vow of prosperity in times of hardship for the Republic.” [7] Its connection with the classical world thus was there, and not only for cultural reasons or artistic aspirations: rather it was also there to reconnect the Florentines to an ancient and powerful augury, for which they appealed to Donatello to make an embodiment of; and this indicates how much certain beliefs were alive and pervasive throughout Florentine society.
If we follow this traces, at last other knots of the question are unraveled. One regards the similarity of Column A with the B and its difference in height, that are explained from the perspective of composition and image. For various reasons which I exposed in one of my previous studies,[8] the image originally offered by the Temple inside was very different than what does now. In the center, around the statue of Mars, there was a shrine similar to the one painted by Vasari in the ceiling of the Salone dei Cinquecento (Hall of the Five-Hundred) in Palazzo Vecchio, and the Column A inside it was clearly similar to the B Columns, but a little shorter since it had to stay on a pedestal and support the statue. Because of this its height was calculated so it wouldn’t be disproportional or stick out above the trabeated circle of the shrine too much. That also explains its identical proportions and materials with the B Columns. Why the C Columns are different remains to be cleared up, but there is an explanation even for this. These two columns have always been where they are now, and they had to be different from the others for symbolic reasons, that we understand observing that even outside next to the East door there are two different white columns from those of the North and South doors, which are dark green. It comes down to a kind of solar symbolism frequent in Antiquity and related to the cult of the victorious emperor, whose power was compared to the sun who every dawn defeats the darkness. It is for this reason that every morning the sun’s rays had to enter from the East door and illuminate the statue: a celebrative symbol, therefore, that can be added to the other similar symbols present throughout the structure. [9]
The fact that later the column of the Old Market, in 1429, was found to be owned by the Opera di S. Maria del Fiore and not the Opera di San Giovanni, as it would have been logical if the column had originally come from the Baptistry, can be explained by the fact that, since it had laid abandoned for centuries at the foot of the Belltower, it must have been peaceably considered property of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, all memory of its origins having been lost. A form of adverse possession, in short.
Lastly, it is needless to further investigate the idea that our ‘Column A’ was a piece recovered from Santa Reparata, a cathedral that was ugly and graceless according to the Florentines at the time, and in which remains there have never been found anything that would suggest it was dignified with such precious frames.
And with regards to the fact that the column was placed by grafting it with a solid iron stud in the stump of another older column, now disappeared underground, but which in 1429 still stuck out of the soil at the intersection of the two main roads of the city, this confirms a clear desire to be traced back to the Roman origins of Florence, which were seen as a source of city pride. [10]
So we can be certain that the column that was in the center of the Baptistry, when, as the oldest legends relate, was a Temple of Mars is precisely the one that today stands in Piazza della Repubblica, to support not only the weight of its statue, but also that of centuries of history.
Note: quotes from the texts of M. Haines are freely translated.
[1] Degl’Innocenti P. (2019) Il Battistero di San Giovanni, un enigma fiorentino – Studi, leggende e verità da Dante a Ken Follett, Firenze, Pontecorboli.
[2] Nuova cronica, I, XLII.
[3] Haines M. (1984), La colonna della Dovizia di Donatello, Rivista d’Arte, year XXXVII series IV, vol. I, pgs. 347-359.
[4] Haines M. (1984), pg. 348.
[5] Haines M. (1984), pg. 354 footnote 22.
[6] Degl’Innocenti P. (2017), L’architettura del battistero fiorentino di San Giovanni – Progetto, appalto, costruzione, vicende, Firenze, Pontecorboli, pg. 85 f.
[7] Haines M. (1984), pg. 356.
[8] Degl’Innocenti P. (2017), pg. 89 ff.
[9] Degl’Innocenti P. (2017), pg. 81 ff.
[10] Haines M. (1984), pg. 355 footnote 25.
The columns have always been of great value, because of which, if they were not used, would still have been kept. This is the column of Piazza Santa Felicita, which had a similar fate to the one in Piazza della Repubblica: having made a narrow escape from the destruction of 1944, it was stored for many years in a nearby courtyard, until it was returned to its place.