Arts and crafts in the Middle Ages : $b a description of mediaeval workmanship in several of the departments of applied art, together with some account of special artisans in the early RenaissanceAddison, Julia de Wolf
History
Arts and crafts in the Middle Ages : $b a description of mediaeval workmanship in several of the departments of applied art, together with some account of special artisans in the early Renaissance
Addison, Julia de Wolf
Arts and crafts movement; Decoration and ornament, Medieval; Decorative arts -- History; Illumination of books and manuscripts
Benedetto da Maiano, one of the "most solemn" workers in intarsia in
Florence, became disgusted with his art after one trying experience,
and ever after turned his attention to other carving. Vasari's
version of the affair is as follows. Benedetto had been making
two beautiful chests, all inlaid most elaborately, and carried
them to the Court of Hungary, to exhibit the workmanship. "When
he had made obeisance to the king, and had been kindly received,
he brought forward his cases and had them unpacked... but it was
then he discovered that the humidity of the sea voyage had softened
the glue to such an extent that when the waxed cloths in which
the coffers had been wrapped were opened, almost all the pieces
were found sticking to them, and so fell to the ground! Whether
Benedetto stood amazed and confounded at such an event, in the
presence of so many nobles, let every one judge for himself."
A famous family of wood inlayers were the del Tasso, who came from
S. Gervasio. One of the brothers, Giambattista, was a wag, and
is said to have wasted much time in amusement and standing about
criticizing the methods of others. He was a friend of Cellini, and
all his cronies pronounce him to have been a good fellow. On one
occasion he had a good dose of the spirit of criticism, himself,
from a visiting abbot, who stopped to see the Medicean tomb, where
Tasso happened to be working. Tasso was requested to show the stranger
about, which he did. The abbot began by depreciating the beauty of
the building, remarking that Michelangelo's figures in the Sacristy
did not interest him, and on his way up the stairs, he chanced to
look out of a window and caught sight of Brunelleschi's dome. When
the dull ecclesiastic began to say that this dome did not merit
the admiration which it raised, the exasperated Tasso, who was
loyal to his friends, could stand no more. Il Lasca recounts what
happened: "Pulling the abbot backward with force, he made him
tumble down the staircase, and he took good care to fall himself
on top of him, and calling out that the frater had been taken mad,
he bound his arms and legs with cords... and then taking him,
hanging over his shoulders, he carried him to a room near,
stretched him on the ground, and left him there in the dark, taking
away the key." We will hope that if Tasso himself was too prone to
criticism, he may have learned a lesson from this didactic monastic,
and was more tolerant in the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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