Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 04 (of 10): Filippino Lippi to Domenico PuligoVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 04 (of 10): Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Being then summoned by the said Pope Sixtus to work in the chapel of
his Palace in competition with many other painters, he painted
therein two scenes, which are held the best among so many; one is
Moses declaring his testament to the Jewish people on having seen
the Promised Land, and the other is his death.
[Illustration: THE LAST JUDGMENT
(_Detail, after the fresco by =Luca Signorelli=. Orvieto: Duomo_)
_Anderson_]
Finally, having executed works for almost every Prince in Italy, and
being now old, he returned to Cortona, where, in those last years of
his life, he worked more for pleasure than for any other reason, as
one who, being used to labour, neither could nor would stay idle. In
this his old age, then, he painted a panel for the Nuns of S.
Margherita at Arezzo, and one for the Company of S. Girolamo, which
was paid for in part by Messer Niccolo Gamurrini, Doctor of Laws and
Auditor of the Ruota,[9] who is portrayed from life in that
panel, kneeling before the Madonna, to whom he is being presented by
a S. Nicholas who is in the same panel; there are also S. Donatus
and S. Stephen, and lower down a nude S. Jerome, and a David who is
singing to a psaltery; and also two prophets, who, as it appears
from the scrolls that they have in their hands, are speaking about
the Conception. This work was brought from Cortona to Arezzo on the
shoulders of the men of that Company; and Luca, old as he was,
insisted on coming to set it in place, and partly also in order to
revisit his friends and relatives. And since he lodged in the house
of the Vasari, in which I then was, a little boy of eight years old,
I remember that the good old man, who was most gracious and
courteous, having heard from the master who was teaching me my first
letters, that I gave my attention to nothing in lesson-time save to
drawing figures, I remember, I say, that he turned to my father
Antonio and said to him: "Antonio, if you wish little Giorgio not to
become backward, by all means let him learn to draw, for, even were
he to devote himself to letters, design cannot be otherwise than
helpful, honourable, and advantageous to him, as it is to every
gentleman." Then, turning to me, who was standing in front of him,
he said: "Mind your lessons, little kinsman." He said many other
things about me, which I withhold, for the reason that I know that I
have failed by a great measure to justify the opinion which the good
old man had of me. And since he heard, as was true, that the blood
used to flow from my nose at that age in such quantities that this
left me sometimes half dead, with infinite lovingness he bound a
jasper round my neck with his own hand; and this memory of Luca will
stay for ever fixed in my mind. The said panel set in place, he
returned to Cortona, accompanied for a great part of the way by many
citizens, friends, and relatives, as was due to the excellence of
Luca, who always lived rather as a noble and a man of rank than as a
painter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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