Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/236

which the artist executed this work, which he painted with the utmost care, gave universal satisfaction; the drawing was more particularly admired. He afterwards painted San Cosimo and San Damiano, for the Black Friars of Campora, a place without the gate of San Piero Gattolini. These figures were destroyed when the church was whitewashed. There is a tabernacle, moreover, on the bridge of Romiti, in the Valdarno, which is very finely painted in fresco, by the hand of Giottino.^[1] We find it further recorded, by many who have written of this artist, that he also gave his attention to sculpture, and executed a figure in marble, for the Campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence: this was placed in the side towards where the orphan house now stands, and was four braccia in height. In Rome, also, he is said to have produced an historical painting, wrhich he completed very successfully. This work is in San Giovanni Laterano; it exhibits the pope, occupied in various ministrations, but is now grievously injured by time. In the palace of the Orsini, Giottino filled a hall with the figures of celebrated men; and on a column in the church of Araceli, to the right of the high altar, he executed a San Ludovico, of great merit.^[2] This master also painted a picture in the lower church of San Francesco, at Assisi. The only place not already occupied by other artists, was an arch over the pulpit; and there Giottino depicted the Coronation of Our Lady, with numerous angels around her, all exhibiting so much grace in the outlines, beauty in the heads, and harmony in the colouring (which last was a quality peculiar to this painter), that the work suffices to prove Giottino fully equal to any master that had then appeared.^[3] Around the arch of the Coronation, Tommaso painted stories from the life of St. Nicholas. In the monastery of Santa Clara, in the same city, and in

exhibited, will find them in Baldinucci, sec. ii. p. 59, together with the inscriptions. See also Villani, lib. xii, cap. xxxiii.

1. This tabernacle was destroyed in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the work of Giottino perished with it. — G. Montani.
2. All the works executed by Giottino in Rome are believed to have perished.
3. Fea considers this coronation to have been the work of a certain Frate Martino, whom he believes to have been the scholar of Simon of Siena. See his Descrizione della Basilica Assisiate.