Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 03 (of 10): Filarete and Simone to MantegnaVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 03 (of 10): Filarete and Simone to Mantegna
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Blessed Raimondo di Catalonia, third General of the Order; the Blessed
Chiaro, a Florentine, and Provincial of Rome; S. Vincenzio di Valenza;
and the Blessed Bernardo, a Florentine. All these heads are truly
gracious and very beautiful. Then, over certain lunettes in the first
cloister, he made many very beautiful figures in fresco, and a Crucifix
with S. Dominic at the foot, which is much extolled; and in the
dormitory, besides many other things throughout the cells and on the
surface of the walls, he painted a story from the New Testament, of a
beauty beyond the power of words to describe. Particularly beautiful and
marvellous is the panel of the high-altar of that church; for, besides
the fact that the Madonna rouses all who see her to devotion by her
simplicity, and that the Saints that surround her are like her in this,
the predella, in which there are stories of the martyrdom of S. Cosimo,
S. Damiano, and others, is so well painted, that one cannot imagine it
possible ever to see a work executed with greater diligence, or little
figures more delicate or better conceived than these are.
In S. Domenico da Fiesole, likewise, he painted the panel of the
high-altar, which has been retouched by other masters and injured,
perchance because it appeared to be spoiling. But the predella and the
Ciborium of the Sacrament have remained in better preservation; and the
innumerable little figures that are to be seen there, in a Celestial
Glory, are so beautiful, that they appear truly to belong to Paradise,
nor can any man who approaches them ever have his fill of gazing on
them. In a chapel of the same church is a panel by his hand, containing
the Annunciation of Our Lady by the Angel Gabriel, with features in
profile, so devout, so delicate, and so well executed, that they appear
truly to have been made rather in Paradise than by the hand of man; and
in the landscape at the back are Adam and Eve, because of whom the
Redeemer was born from the Virgin. In the predella, also, there are some
very beautiful little scenes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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