Ille ego sum, per quem pictura extincta revixit, Cui quam recta manus. tam fuit et facilis. Naturae deerat nostrae, quod defait arti: Plus licuit nulli pingere, nec melius. Miraris turrim egregiam sacro aere sonantem? Haec quoque de modulo crevit ad astra meo. Denique sum Jottus, quid opus fuit illa referre? Hoc nomen longi carminis instar erit. And in order that those who come after may see by Giotto's own designs the nature of the excellence of this great man, there are some magnificent specimens in my book, which I have collected with great care as well as with much trouble and expense. Agostino and Agnolo, Sculptors and Architects of Siena. Among the others who worked in the school of the sculptors Giovanni and Niccola Pisani were Agostino and Agnolo, sculptors of Siena, whose lives we are now writing, and who achieved great success according to the standard of the time. I have discovered that their father and mother were both Sienese, and their antecedents were architects, for the Fontebranda was completed by them in the year 1190, under the government of the three Consols, and in the following year they founded the Custom House and other buildings of Siena, under the same consulship. Indeed it is often seen that where the seeds of talent have existed for a long time they often germinate and put forth shoots so that they afterwards produce greater and better fruit than the first plants had done. Thus Agostino and Agnolo added many improvements to the style of Giovanni and Niccola Pisani, and enriched art with better designs and inventions, as their works clearly show. It is said that when Giovanni Pisano returned to Pisa from Naples in the year 1284, he stopped at Siena to design and found the facade of the Duomo, where the three principal doors are, so that it should be entirely adorned with marble. It was then that Agostino, who was not more than fifteen years of age at the time, associated with him in order to study sculpture, of which he had learned the first principles, being no less attracted by that art than by architecture. Under Giovanni's instruction and by means of unremitting study he surpassed all his fellow-pupils in design, grace and style, so that everyone remarked that he was his master's right eye. And because it is natural to desire for those whom one loves beyond all other gifts of nature, mind or fortune, that quality of worth which alone renders men great and noble in this life and blessed in the next, Agostino took advantage of Giovanni's presence to secure the same advantages for his younger brother Agnolo; nor was if very difficult to do so, for the practice already enjoyed by Agnolo with Agostino and the other sculptors, and the honour and benefits which he perceived could be gained from this art, had so inflamed him with a desire to take up the study of sculpture, that he had already made a few things in secret before the idea had occurred to Agostino.