Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo SoggiVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
so that he was settled in Arezzo, he would have departed straightway.
However, having finally become pacified, he executed an altar-piece for
the Church of Sargiano, a place two miles distant from Arezzo, where
there are Frati Zoccolanti; in which he painted the Assumption of Our
Lady into Heaven, with many little Angels supporting her, and S. Thomas
below receiving the Girdle, while all around are S. Francis, S. Louis,
S. John the Baptist, and S. Elizabeth, Queen of Hungary. In some of
these figures, and particularly in some of the little Angels, he
acquitted himself very well; and so also in the predella he painted some
scenes with little figures, which are passing good. He executed,
likewise, in the Convent of the Nuns of the Murate, who belong to the
same Order, in that city, a Dead Christ with the Maries, which is
wrought with a high finish for a picture in fresco. In the Abbey of S.
Fiore, a seat of Black Friars, behind the Crucifix that is placed on the
high-altar, he painted in oils, on a canvas, Christ praying in the
Garden and the Angel showing to Him the Chalice of the Passion and
comforting Him, which was certainly a work of no little beauty and
excellence. And for the Nuns of S. Benedetto, of the Order of Camaldoli,
at Arezzo, on an arch above a door by which one enters the convent, he
painted the Madonna, S. Benedict, and S. Catharine, a work which was
afterwards thrown to the ground in order to enlarge the church.
In the township of Marciano in Valdichiana, where he passed much of his
time, living partly on the revenues that he had in that place and partly
on what he could earn there, Niccolo began an altar-piece of the Dead
Christ and many other works, with which he occupied himself for a time.
And meanwhile, having with him the above-mentioned Domenico Giuntalodi
of Prato, whom he loved as a son and kept in his house, he strove to
make him excellent in the matters of art, teaching him so well how to
draw in perspective, to copy from nature, and to make designs, that he
was already becoming very able in all these respects, showing a good and
beautiful genius. And this Niccolo did, besides being moved by the love
and affection that he bore to that young man, in the hope of having one
who might help him now that he was nearing old age, and might give him
some return in his last years for so much labour and lovingness. Niccolo
was in truth most loving with every man, true by nature, and much the
friend of those who laboured in order to attain to something in the
world of art; and what he knew he taught to them with extraordinary
willingness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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