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During the same years when the first sculptures by Donatello for the Campanile of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore were executed, he made the Marzocco, the emblem of the city of Florence. It was mentioned in the archives of Santa Maria del Fiore as a stone lion to be placed on top of a column of the stairs of the Pope's apartment in Santa Maria Novella, for the visit to Florence of Pope Martin V in 1419. The silence of Vasari and his followers exerted such a negative influence that the sculpture became well-known only in the last century, when it was placed in front of Palazzo Vecchio in 1812. It was moved to the Bargello National Museum in 1865.
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