Although the old proverb that a bon vivant never lacks means is untrue and unworthy of confidence, the contrary being the case, since a man who does not live within his means comes at last to live in want, and dies in misery; yet it sometimes happens that Fortune rather assists those who throw away without reserve than those who are orderly and careful in all things. When the favour of Fortune is wanting, Death frequently repairs the defect and remedies the consequences of men's thoughtlessness, for it comes at the very moment when they would begin to realise, with sorrow, how wretched a thing it is to have squandered everything when young to pass one's age on shortened means in poverty and toil. This would have been the fate of Giovanni da S. Stefano a Ponte of Florence, if, after he had devoured his patrimony as well as the gains which came into his hand, rather through good fortune than by his desserts, and some legacies which came to him from unexpected quarters, he had not reached the end of his life at the very time when he had exhausted his means. He was a pupil of Buonamico Buffalmacco, and imitated his master more in following worldly pleasures than in endeavouring to make himself a skilful painter. He was born in the year 1307, and was Buffalmacco's pupil in his youth. He executed his first works in fresco in the Pieve of Empoli in the chapel of St Laurence, painting many scenes from the life of that saint with such care, that so good a beginning was considered to promise much better things in the future. Accordingly he was invited in the year 1344 to Arezzo, where he did an Assumption in a chapel in S. Francesco. Being in some credit in that city, for lack of other artists, he next painted in the Pieve the chapel of St Onofrio and that of St Anthony, ruined to-day by the damp. He left other paintings in S. Giustina and S. Matteo, which were pulled down with the churches when Duke Cosimo was fortifying the city. Almost on this very spot, near S. Giustina, at the foot of the abutment of an ancient bridge, at the point where the river enters the city, they there found a fine marble head of Appius Ciccus, and one of his son, with an ancient epitaph, which are now in the Duke's wardrobe. When Giovanni returned to Florence, at the time when the middle arch of the Ponte a S. Trinita was being completed, he decorated a chapel built on a pile, and dedicated to St Michael the Archangel, an ancient and beautiful building, doing many figures, both inside and out, and the whole of the principal front. This chapel was carried away, together with the bridge, in the flood of 1557. Some assert that he owed his name of Giovanni dal Ponte to these works. In Pisa, in the year 1335, he did some scenes in fresco behind the altar in the principal chapel of St Paolo a ripa d'Arno, which are now ruined by damp and time. Another work of his is the chapel of the Scali in S. Trinita at Florence, and another beside it,