Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10): Cimabue to Agnolo GaddiVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 01 (of 10): Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
After this work, and after making some sculptures in marble for the
Madonna that is on the abutment of the Ponte Vecchio, with great honour
for himself, he left his brother Bernardo to execute by himself a Hell
in the Campo Santo, which is described by Dante, and which was
afterwards spoilt in the year 1530 and restored by Sollazzino, a painter
of our own times; and he returned to Florence, where, in the middle of
the Church of S. Croce, on a very great wall on the right, he painted in
fresco the same subjects that he painted in the Campo Santo of Pisa, in
three similar pictures, excepting, however, the scene where S. Macarius
is showing to three Kings the misery of man, and the life of the hermits
who are serving God on that mountain. Making, then, all the rest of that
work, he laboured therein with better design and more diligence than he
had done in Pisa, holding, nevertheless, to almost the same plan in the
invention, the manner, the scrolls, and the rest, without changing
anything save the portraits from life, for those in this work were
partly of his dearest friends, whom he placed in Paradise, and partly of
men little his friends, who were put by him in Hell. Among the good is
seen portrayed from life in profile, with the triple crown on his head,
Pope Clement VI, who changed the Jubilee in his reign from every hundred
to every fifty years, and was a friend of the Florentines, and had some
of Orcagna's pictures, which were very dear to him. Among the same is
Maestro Dino del Garbo, a most excellent physician of that time, dressed
as was then the wont of doctors, with a red bonnet lined with miniver on
his head, and held by the hand by an angel; with many other portraits
that are not recognized. Among the damned he portrayed Guardi, serjeant
of the Commune of Florence, being dragged along by the Devil with a
hook, and he is known by three red lilies that he has on his white
bonnet, such as were then wont to be worn by the serjeants and other
similar officials; and this he did because Guardi once made distraint on
his property. He also portrayed there the notary and the judge who had
been opposed to him in that action. Near to Guardi is Ceccho d'Ascoli, a
famous wizard of those times; and a little above--namely, in the
middle--is a hypocrite friar, who, having issued from a tomb, is seeking
furtively to put himself among the good, while an angel discovers him
and thrusts him among the damned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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