"'Art thou not Oderigi? Art not thou Agobbio's glory, glory of that art Which they of Paris call the limner's skill?' 'Brother,' said he, 'with tints that gayer smile, Bolognian Franco's pencil lines the leaves: His all the honour now, my light obscured. In truth I had not been thus courteous to him The whilst I lived, though eagerness of zeal For that pre-eminence my heart was bent on. Here of such pride the forfeiture is paid; Nor were I even here, if, able still To sin, I had not turned me unto God. O powers of man! how vain your glory, nipt E'en in its height of verdure, if an age Less bright succeed not. Cimabue thought To lord it over painting's field, and now The cry is Giotto's, and his name eclipsed.'"[129] [Footnote *128: Cf. VENTURI, _Storia dell'Arte Italiana_ (Milano, 1907), vol. V., 837, 1003-4, 1014, 1022.] [Footnote 129: CAREY'S _Dante_, Purg. XI., 76.] Baldinucci has written a life of this master, chiefly in confirmation of his theory that all modern painting was produced from the personal influence of Cimabue, a dogma combated by Lanzi. His death is placed in 1299, which would make him contemporary with that Florentine artificer, and Vasari calls him the friend of Giotto, who was much his junior. The preservation of his name is perhaps chiefly owing to Dante's notice, though the antiquaries of Gubbio now reject the lapidary inscription which claims for the latter a residence in their town. There is in truth a sad deficiency of facts regarding Oderigi, and no work from his hand being now known, speculation as to his style would be useless.[130] That the painters connected with Gubbio in the following generation may have been formed under his instructions, is however a conjecture fairly admissible. [Footnote 130: The Ordo Officiorum Senensis Ecclesiæ, a MS. of 1215, in the library of Siena, has been ascribed to him, by confusion with another Oderico, a canon there; it possesses no artistic merit whatever.]