artist depicted the effigies of certain celebrated men in the house of the Carducci family, now belonging to the Pandolfini. These are partly imaginary and partly portraits; raong them are Filippo Spano degli Scolari, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and others.[1] At the Scarperia in Magello, he painted an undraped figure of Charity over the door of the vicar’s palace; it was a very beautiful thing, but has been destroyed. In the year 1478, when Giuliano de’ Medici was killed, and Lorenzo his brother wounded in the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, by the Pazzi and others, their adherents and fellow conspirators; it was resolved by the Signoria, that all who had taken part in the plot should be painted as traitors on the fagade of the palace of the Podesta: whereupon, the work being offered to Andrea dal Castagno, he, as the servant of, and much beholden to the house of Medici, accepted the office very willingly; and having set himself to the work, he executed it in such a manner that it was a perfect wonder. It would indeed not be possible adequately to describe the art and judgment displayed in these figures, for the most part copied from the life, and hung up by the feet in the strangest attitudes, which were infinitely varied and exceedingly fine.[2] The approbation which this work obtained from the whole city, but more especially from those who were well versed in the art of painting, caused the artist to be no longer named Andrea dal Castagno, but he was ever afterwards called Andrea degl’ Impiccati.[3]
This master lived in a very honourable manner; but as he spent freely, more particularly in dress and liberal housekeeping, he left but little property; when, at the age of seventyone, he departed to another life.[4] A short time only had elapsed
- ↑ The later Florentine annotators are inclined to think that Vasari has made two works of one, and inquire if he may not be thinking of the work executed forPandolfo Pandolfini at Legnara. See ante, p. 95. Their conjecture receives a certain degree of confirmation from the fact that no trace of the works here described can be found.
- ↑ This work has long been lost.
- ↑ Andrea of the hanged, or “gibbeted.”
- ↑ Filarete, in his Trattato, mentions a painter named Andrea among those who died in the year 1460; to this name there is appended, in the codex of the Magliabecchiana, the words “degl’ Impiccati,” a circumstance which has caused some writers to conjecture that Andrea degl’ Impiccati was a different person from Andrea dal Castagno.
