Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo MichelozziVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
This work finished, Jacopo returned to the Casentino, and after he had
made many works in Pratovecchio, in Poppi, and other places in that
valley, he betook himself to Arezzo, which then governed itself with the
counsel of sixty of its richest and most honoured citizens, to whose
care was committed the whole administration. There, in the principal
chapel of the Vescovado, he painted a story of S. Martin, and in the
Duomo Vecchio, now in ruins, a number of pictures, among which was the
portrait of Pope Innocent VI, in the principal chapel. Next, in the
Church of S. Bartolommeo, for the Chapter of the Canons of the Pieve, he
painted the wall where the high-altar is, and the Chapel of S. Maria
della Neve; and in the old Company of S. Giovanni de' Peducci he made
many stories of that Saint, which to-day are covered with whitewash. In
the Church of S. Domenico, likewise, he painted the Chapel of S.
Cristofano, portraying there from nature the Blessed Masuolo, who is
liberating from prison a merchant of the Fei family, who caused that
chapel to be built; which Blessed Masuolo, as prophet, predicted many
misadventures to the Aretines in his lifetime. In the Church of S.
Agostino, in the chapel and on the altar of the Nardi, he painted in
fresco some stories of S. Laurence, with marvellous manner and
execution.
[Illustration: TABERNACLE
(_After_ Jacopo di Casentino. _Florence: Arte della Lana_)
_Brogi_]
And because he exercised himself also in the things of architecture, by
order of the sixty aforesaid citizens he reconducted under the walls of
Arezzo the water that comes from the foot of the hill of Pori, three
hundred braccia distant from the city. This water, in the time of the
Romans, had been brought first to the theatre, whereof the remains are
still there, and from that theatre, which was on the hill where to-day
there is the fortress, to the amphitheatre of the same city, on the
plain; but these edifices and conduits were wholly ruined and spoilt by
the Goths. Jacopo, then, as it has been said, having brought this
water below the walls, made the fountain which was then called the Fonte
Guizianelli, and which is now named, by the corruption of the word, the
Fonte Viniziana; this work endured from that time, which was the year
1354, up to the year 1527, and no more, for the reason that the plague
of that year, the war that came afterwards, the fact that many
intercepted the water at their own convenience for the use of their
gardens, and still more the fact that Jacopo did not sink it, brought it
about that to-day it is not, as it should be, standing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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