Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the FlemingsVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the Flemings
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
I will not omit to say that each of these Deaths had on either side
the device of Michelagnolo, which was three crowns, or rather, three
circlets, intertwined together in such a manner, that the
circumference of one passed through the centre of the two others, and
so with each; which sign Michelagnolo used either to suggest that the
three professions of sculpture, painting, and architecture are
interwoven one with another and so bound together, that each of them
receives benefit and adornment from the others, and they neither can
nor should be separated; or, indeed, being a man of lofty genius, he
may have had a more subtle meaning. But the Academicians, considering
him to have been perfect in all these three professions, and that each
of these had assisted and embellished the other, changed his three
circlets into three crowns intertwined together, with the motto:
TERGEMINIS TOLLIT HONORIBUS.
Which was intended to signify that in those three professions the
crown of human perfection was justly due to him.
On the pulpit from which Varchi delivered the funeral oration, which
was afterwards printed, there was no ornamentation, because, that work
having been executed in bronze, with scenes in half-relief and
low-relief, by the excellent Donatello, any adornment that might have
been added to it would have been by a great measure less beautiful.
But on the other, which is opposite to the first, although it had not
yet been raised on the columns, there was a picture, four braccia in
height and little more than two in width, wherein there was painted
with beautiful invention and excellent design, to represent Fame, or
rather, Honour, a young man in a most beautiful attitude, with a
trumpet in the right hand, and with the feet planted on Time and
Death, in order to show that fame and honour, in spite of death and
time, preserve alive to all eternity those who have laboured valiantly
in this life. This picture was by the hand of Vincenzio Danti, the
sculptor of Perugia, of whom we have spoken, and will speak again
elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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