Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects/Margaritone

by Giorgio Vasari

 

MARGARITONE, PAINTER, SCULPTOR, AND ARCHITECT OF AREZZO.

[1236—1313.]

Among the other old painters, in whom the praises justly accorded to Cimabue, and Giotto, his disciple, for those advances in art which were rendering their names illustrious through all Italy, awakened alarm for their own reputation, was a certain Margaritone, of Arezzo,^[1] a painter, who, with the others that had held the first place in art during that unhappy age, now perceived that the works of these masters must well-nigh extinguish his fame. This Margaritone being in high estimation among the painters who then worked in the Greek manner, executed many pictures in distemper, at Arezzo, as also many others in fresco, having nearly covered the church of San Clemente with numerous paintings in that manner, at great cost of time and labour. This church was an abbey of the order of Camaldolites, and has been totally destroyed, together with many other buildings and a strong fortress called San Chimenti, by Duke Cosmo de’ Medici, who demolished not only those edifices, but many others^[2] situated around the whole circuit of the city ; for the duke determined to replace the old walls, restored by Guido Pietramalesco, formerly bishop and lord of Arezzo, by others much stronger, and furnished with bastions and curtains, stronger and less extended than the others, to the end that they might not require so large a force to maintain them. In these frescoes of Margaritone, in San Clemente, were numerous figures, both small and great, and though in the Greek manner, they were admitted to evince much judgment, as well as love of art, as may be inferred from such works of this master as still remain in Arezzo, more particularly from a picture now in San Francesco, with a modern frame. It is in the chapel of the Conception, and one part of it is a Madonna, held in high veneration by the brotherhood. In the same church, and also in the Greek manner, Margaritone executed a large crucifix, now placed in that chapel, in which is the superintendents’ room ; he made besides many more of these crucifixes for that city.^[3] For the nuns of Santa Margarita this artist executed a work now in the transept of their church ; this is on panel covered with canvas, it represents passages from the life of the Virgin, and that of St. John the Baptist, and comprises many small figures, of better manner than those of larger size, designed with more grace and finished with greater delicacy ; and this work deserves consideration, not only because the little figures are so carefully done that they look like miniatures, but also for the extraordinary fact, that a picture on canvas should have continued in such good preservation during 300 years.^[4] Margaritone executed an endless number of pictures for different quarters of the city : and one, for the convent of the Friars de’ Zoccoli,^[5] at Sargiano, a St. Francis, a portrait, and on which he has placed his name, as being a work which, according to his own opinion, he had executed more successfully than common. Having afterwards completed a large crucifix in wood, painted in the Greek manner, he sent it to Florence to Messer Farinata degli Uberti, a most illustrious citizen, who, among many other great and excellent deeds, had liberated his country from imminent danger and ruin. This crucifix is now in Santa Croce, between the chapel of the Peruzzi family, and that of the Giugni. In San Domenico d’Arezzo, a church and convent built by the lords of Pietramala, in 1275, as the inscriptions prove, Margaritone executed many works before returning to Rome, where he had previously been in high favour with Pope Urban IV, and where, by command of that Pontiff, he executed some frescoes in the portico of St. Peter’s, which, though in the Greek manner then prevailing, were very tolerable for those times. Margaritone also painted a picture of St. Francis, at Ganghereto, a small town above the Terra Nuova in Valdarno,^[6] and afterwards, possessing an elevated mind, he betook himself to sculpture, and that with so much diligence, that he succeeded better than he had done in painting : for, although his first efforts in sculpture were in the Greek manner, as we perceive from four figures in wood, which make part of a Deposition from the Cross, in the Church of San Francesco, with other figures in high relief, placed over the baptismal font in the Chapel of St. Francis, he nevertheless acquired a better manner when he had seen the works of Arnolfo in Florence, with those of the other eminent sculptors of the time. And having returned to Arezzo in the year 1275, with the court of Pope Gregory, who passed through Florence, on his way from Avignon to Rome, he had an opportunity of making himself better known ; for that pontiff dying at Arezzo, after bestowing thirty thousand crowns on the commune, for the completion of the episcopal palace commenced by Maestro Lapo, still but little advanced, the people of Arezzo resolved to erect a tomb in marble to his memory, in the episcopate itself, and confided the execution of the work to Margaritone. To this he devoted himself with great diligence, and completed it so successfully—including portraits of Gregory taken from nature, both in painting and marble, among its ornaments—that it was considered the best work he had yet produced^[7]* The chapel of San Gregorio was also dedicated to the memory of this pontiff by the people of Arezzo ; and there, too, Margaritone executed a painting. He next undertook the erection of the episcopal buildings, in which he made considerable advance, abiding by the plans of Lapo ; but he did not bring the work to completion, the war between the Florentines and Arezzo being renewed in the year 1289, by the fault of Guglielmino degli Ubertini, bishop and lord of Arezzo, who was aided by the Tarlati of Pietramala, and the Pazzi of the Valdarno, when the money left by the Pope for the expenses of the episcopal edifice was all expended ; while an evil end befel the leaders, who were routed and slain at Campaldino. It is true that the people of Arezzo then allotted the amount of a toll levied on the surrounding districts as a perpetual revenue for this work, which has continued to be exacted to the present time, and is likely to continue so still. But to return to Margaritone. He appears to have been the first—judgingfrom what we see in his works in painting—who considered the precautions required by him who paints on wood, to the end that the joinings should hold firmly, and that no clefts and fissures should become apparent after the completion of the painting. It was his custom to cover the whole surface with canvas, which he secured by means of a strong glue, made from the boiled shreds of parchment ; over this canvas, he next applied a layer of gypsum, as may be seen in his pictures, as well as in those of others ; on the gypsum, which was mixed with the glue above described, he then formed diadems and other ornaments in relief. He was also the inventor of grounding in bol-armoniac, whereon he laid leafgold, which he discovered the means of fixing and burnishing.^[8] All these methods, having never been seen before, may yet be perceived in his works, more particularly in the capitular church of Arezzo, on the front of the altar, where are passages from the life of San Donato, as well as in the churches of St. Agnes and St. Nicholas in the same city.^[9]

Many of the works which Margaritone produced in his native city were sent to other places ; some of these are at Rome, in the churches of San Giovanni and San Pietro ; some at Pisa, in the church of Santa Caterina, where, on an altar in the transept,^[10] is a picture of St. Catherine, with various passages of her life represented by small figures, together with a little picture of St. Francis, also containing many figures representing many passages of his life, on a gold ground. In the upper church of San Francesco d’Assisi is further to be seen a crucifix by this artist, painted in the Greek manner, on a beam which crosses the church,—all of which were highly valued in those days, although no longer esteemed in art, except for their antiquity, and as possessing merit for a period when art had not acquired the elevation to which it has now attained. Margaritone also gave his attention to architecture ; and although I have not specified any of the buildings constructed after his designs, because they are not of importance, yet I will not omit to add, that by what I am able to discover, it was he who gave the design and plans for the palace of the governors in the city of Ancona, built in 1270, after the Greek manner ; and, what is more, the sculptured ornaments of the eight windows in the principal front, are by his hand. These decorations consist of two columns in the middle of each window, supporting two small arches, above which are historical scenes in mezzo-rilievo, which occupy the space from the two little arches to the top of the window. These reliefs represent events of the Old Testament, cut in a sort of stone peculiar to that district. Beneath the windows are certain letters inscribed on the façade, the purport of which is rather divined than ascertained, for they are neither well formed nor clearly written ; but we gather from them the date of the building, and under whose government it was erected.^[11] given by Margaritone. He died at the age of seventy-seven, afflicted and disgusted—as it is said—that he had lived to see the changes by which all honours were transferred to new artists. He was buried in the Duomo Vecchio, without the city of Arezzo, in a tomb of Travertine, which has been destroyed in our own days by the demolition of that church. The following epitaph was written for him :

“ Hic jacet ille bonus pictura Margaritonus,
  Cui requiem Dominus tradat ubique pius.”

The portrait of Margaritone was also in the Duomo Vecchio, in a picture of the Adoration of the Magi, by Spinello, and was copied by myself before the church was destroyed.^[12]

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1. See Lanzi, History of Painting, vol. i, p. 37.
2. Among them the Duomo Vecchio, mentioned in the life of Arnolfo, with the churches of Santa Giustina and San Matteo, referred to in the life of Giovanni da Ponte.
3. The Madonna and crucifix here described are still in existence.—Ed. Flor. 1846.
4. This work, which all the commentators declare to be lost, we believe ourselves to have recognized among the pictures collected in Florence by the Signors Francesco Lombardi and Ugo Baldi ; it is one of the most characteristic and important of the pictures of Margaritone still remaining.—Ed. Flor. 1846.
5. An order of Franciscans who wear wooden shoos. This picture is still in existence, and the inscription is as follows :—“ margarit. de aretio pingebat.”
6. This painting is still preserved in the Church of San Francesco, but has been retouched by a later hand.—Ed. Flor., 1846.
7. The painted portrait is almost entirely effaced ; that in marble, with the other sculptures of the tomb, are still in good condition, two of the figures have been engraved for the great work of Cicognara. — Ed. Flor.
8. Most of the commentators agree in declaring, that these methods were all practised before the time of Margaritone.
9. These works are lost, with the exception of a small Madonna in St. Agnes.
10. The Italian commentators, Bottari and Della Valle, explain the word “tramezzo,” as here used by Vasari, to mean a beam crossing the church between the choir and the nave ; but this explanation renders many passages unintelligible ; for how are chapels and altars, so frequently described as being “in the tramezzo,” to find place on a beam ? Vasari may have meant the rood-loft by this tramezzo. Schorn translates it the transept : or it may be the screen of the choir.
11. This building has suffered so many changes, that few traces of its primitive character now remain. Many commentators declare, that Vasari has not been just to Margaritone in his estimate of that artist’s merits as an architect.
12. This took place in 1561, thirteen years, that is, before the death of Vasari.—Giu. Montani.