other should take his buckler so painted, and should give six lire to Giotto, since he was in the right. Wherefore he was constrained to take his buckler and go, and was dismissed; and so, not knowing his measure, he had his measure taken." It is said that Giotto, while working in his boyhood under Cimabue, once painted a fly on the nose of a figure that Cimabue himself had made, so true to nature that his master, returning to continue the work, set himself more than once to drive it away with his hand, thinking that it was real, before he perceived his mistake. Many other tricks played by Giotto and many witty retorts could I relate, but I wish that these, which deal with matters pertinent to art, should be enough for me to have told in this place, leaving the rest to the said Franco and others. Finally, seeing that there remained memory of Giotto not only in the works that issued from his hands, but in those also that issued from the hand of the writers of those times, he having been the man who recovered the true method of painting, which had been lost for many years before him; therefore, by public decree and by the effort and particular affection of the elder Lorenzo de' Medici, the Magnificent, in admiration of the talent of so great a man his portrait was placed in S. Maria del Fiore, carved in marble by Benedetto da Maiano, an excellent sculptor, together with the verses written below, made by that divine man, Messer Angelo Poliziano, to the end that those who should become excellent in any profession whatsoever might be able to cherish a hope of obtaining, from others, such memorials as these that Giotto deserved and obtained in liberal measure from his goodness: Ille ego sum, per quem pictura extincta revixit, Cui quam recta manus, tam fuit et facilis. Naturae deerat nostrae quod defuit arti; Plus licuit nulli pingere, nec melius. Miraris turrim egregiam sacro aere sonantem? Haec quoque de modulo crevit ad astra meo. Denique sum Jottus, quid opus fuit illa referre? Hoc nomen longi carminis instar erit. And to the end that those who come after may be able to see drawings by the very hand of Giotto, and from these to recognize all the more the excellence of so great a man, in our aforesaid book there are some that are marvellous, sought out by me with no less diligence than labour and expense. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 11: See note on p. 57.] [Footnote 12: See note on p. 57.] [Footnote 13: See note on p. 57.] AGOSTINO AND AGNOLO OF SIENA LIFE OF AGOSTINO AND AGNOLO OF SIENA, SCULPTORS AND ARCHITECTS