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
In a cloister of S. Miniato without Florence, also, he wrought the lives
of the Holy Fathers, chiefly in terra-verde, and partly in colour;
wherein he paid little regard to effecting harmony by painting with one
colour, as should be done in painting stories, for he made the fields
blue, the cities red, and the buildings varied according to his
pleasure; and in this he was at fault, for something which is meant to
represent stone cannot and should not be tinted with another colour. It
is said that while Paolo was labouring at this work, the Abbot who was
then head of that place gave him scarcely anything to eat but cheese.
Wherefore Paolo, having grown weary of this, determined, like the shy
fellow that he was, to go no more to work there; whereupon the Abbot
sent to look for him, and Paolo, when he heard friars asking for him,
would never be at home, and if peradventure he met any couples of that
Order in the streets of Florence, he would start running and flying from
them with all his might. Now two of them, more curious than the rest and
younger than Paolo, caught him up one day and asked him for what reason
he did not return to finish the work that he had begun, and why he fled
at the sight of a friar; and Paolo answered: "You have murdered me in a
manner that I not only fly from you, but cannot show myself near any
carpenter's shop or pass by one, and all because of the thoughtlessness
of your Abbot, who, what with pies and with soups always made of cheese,
has crammed so much cheese into me that I am in terror lest, being
nothing but cheese, they may use me for making glue. And if it were to
go on any longer, I would probably be no more Paolo, but cheese." The
friars, leaving him with peals of laughter, told everything to the
Abbot, who made him return to his work, and ordered him some other fare
than cheese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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