Honour where honour is due.

We should be singing the praises of Filippo Brunelleschi in every quarter of the city.
After Brunelleschi the chief architect of the cathedral was Giuliano da Maiano, the artist of the beautiful intarsia woodwork in the sacristy, and the uncle of Benedetto da Maiano who made the S.Croce pulpit.
The present facade is the work of the architect Emilio de Fabris, whose tablet is to be seen on the left wall.

It was finished in 1887, five hundred and more years after the abandonment of Arnolfo's original design and three hundred and more years after the destruction of the second one, begun in 1357 and demolished in 1587.

Of Arnolfo's facade the primitive seated statue of Boniface VIII (or John XXII) just inside the cathedral is, with a bishop in one of the sacristies, the only remnant; while of the second facade, for which Donatello and other early Renaissance sculptors worked, the giant S.John the Evangelist, in the left aisle, is perhaps the most important relic.

Other statues in the cathedral were also there, while the central figure--the Madonna with enamel eyes--may be seen in the cathedral museum.