Within, the church is strange and splendid. It is as though one stood in a loggia in deep shadow, at the end of the day in the last gold of the sunset; and there, amid the ancient fading glory of the frescoes, is the wonderful shrine that Orcagna made for the picture of Madonna, who had turned the Granary of S. Michele into the Church of the People. Finished in 1359, this tabernacle is the loveliest work of the kind in Italy, an unique masterpiece, and perhaps the most beautiful example of the Italian Gothic manner in existence. Orcagna seems to have been at work on it for some ten years, covering it with decoration and carving those reliefs of the Life of the Virgin in that grand style which he had found in Giotto and learned perhaps from Andrea Pisano. To describe the shrine itself would be impossible and useless. It is like some miniature and magic church, a casquet made splendid not with jewels but with beauty, where the miracle picture of Madonna--not that ancient and wonderful picture by Ugolino da Siena, but a work, it is said, of Bernardo Daddi--glows under the lamps. On the west side, in front of the altar, Orcagna has carved the Marriage of the Virgin and the Annunciation; on the south, the Nativity of Our Lord and the Adoration of the Magi; on the north, the Presentation of the Virgin and her Birth; and on the east, the Purification and the Annunciation of her Death. And above these last, in a panel of great beauty, he has carved the Death of the Virgin, where, among the Apostles crowding round her bed, while St. Thomas--or is it St. John?--passionately kisses her feet, Jesus Himself stands with her soul in His arms, that little Child which had first entered the kingdom of heaven. Above this sorrowful scene you may see the Glory and Assumption of Our Lady in a mandorla glory, upheld by six angels, while St. Thomas kneels below, stretching out his arms, assured at last. It is, as it were, the prototype of the Madonna della Cintola, that exquisite and lovely relief which Nanni di Banco carved later for the north gate of the Duomo, only here all the sweetness that Nanni has seen and expressed seems to be lost in a sort of solemnity and strength.
Between these panels Orcagna has set the virtues Theological and Cardinal, little figures of much force and beauty; and at the corners he has carved angels bearing palms and lilies. Some who have seen this shrine so loaded with ornament, so like some difficult and complicated canticle, have gone away disappointed. Remembering the strength and significance of Orcagna's work in fresco, they have perhaps looked for some more simple thing, and indeed for a less rhetorical praise. Yet I think it is rather the fault of Or San Michele than of the shrine itself, that it does not certainly vanquish any possible objection and assure us at once of its perfection and beauty. If it could be seen in the beautiful spacious transept of S. Croce, or even in Santo Spirito across Arno, that sense as of something elaborate and complicated would perhaps not be felt; but here in Or San Michele one seems to have come upon a priceless treasure in a cave.