Florence, Italy
The monument on the right side is the statue of Ludovico di Giovanni de' Medici, known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere,. Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned the statue in honour of his father, the last of the great mercenary military captains, and sculptor Baccio Bandinelli began working on it in 1540. Uncharacteristically, Bandinelli presented his subject seated on a throne-like chair. He doubtlessly thought this was appropriate: the statue was to rest on a pedestal inside the Basilica of San Lorenzo. But Cosimo I changed his mind and had the statue installed in Palazzo Vecchio, in the Sala dell'Udienza. Bandinelli also decorated the massive marble pedestal on which the statue was to rest, carving a relief celebrating the clemency shown by the victorious Giovanni dalle Bande Nere to his prisoners. However, the pedestal proved too large when Cosimo changed his plans, so instead of going with the statue to Palazzo Vecchio, it was placed in piazza San Lorenzo, where it stands today, and soon became popularly known as the Base of San Lorenzo.
Constructed over the period from 1152 to 1363, the Pisa Baptistry of St. John is the largest baptistry in Italy, at 54.86 m high, with a circumference of 107.24 m. The Pisa Baptistry is an example of the transition from the Romanesque style to the Gothic style: the lower section is in the Romanesque style, with rounded arches, while the upper sections are in the Gothic style, with pointed arches. The Baptistry is constructed of marble. Constructed on the same unstable sand as the tower and cathedral, the Baptistry leans 0.6 degrees toward the cathedral. Originally the shape of the Baptistery, according to the project by Diotisalvi, was different. It was perhaps similar to the church of Holy Sepulchre in Pisa, with its pyramidal roof. After the death of the architect, Nicola Pisano continued the work, changing the style to the more modern Gothic one. Also an external roof was added giving the shape of a cupola. As a side effect of the two roofs, the pyramidal inner one and the domed external one, the interior is said to be acoustically perfect, making of that space a resonating chamber.
