The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8)Vasari, Giorgio
History
The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8)
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
At the same time there lived a Sienese painter, called Ugolino, of
considerable repute, and a great friend of Stefano. He did many
pictures and chapels in all parts of Italy. But he kept in great part
to the Byzantine style, to which he had become attached by habit, and
always preferred, from a caprice of his own, to follow the manner of
Cimabue rather than that of Giotto, which was held in such esteem.
His works consist of a picture for the high altar of S. Croce, on a
gold ground, and another picture which stood for many years on the
high altar of S. Maria Novella, and which is now in the
chapter-house, where every year the Spanish nation celebrates with a
solemn feast the day of St James and its other offices and burial
services. Besides these he did many other things in a good style, but
without in the least departing from the manner of his master. It was
he who painted on a pillar of bricks in the loggia, which Lapo had
built on the piazza of Orsanmichele, that Madonna which, not many
years after, worked so many miracles that the loggia was for a great
time full of images, and to this day is held in the highest
veneration. Finally, in the chapel of M. Ridolfo de' Bardi, in S.
Croce, where Giotto painted the life of St Francis, he did a
crucifix in tempera with the Magdalene and St John weeping, and two
friars on either side. Ugolino died at an advanced age in the year
1349, and was honourably buried at Siena, his native place.
But to return to Stefano, who, they say, was also a good architect,
and what has been said above makes this likely; he died, it is said,
at the beginning of the Jubilee of 1350, at the age of forty-nine,
and was buried at S. Spirito in the tomb of his ancestors with this
epitaph:
Stephano Florentino pictori, faciundis imaginibus ac colorandis
figuris nulli unquam inferiori; Affines moestiss. pos. vix. an.
XXXXIX.
Pietro Laurati, Painter of Siena.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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