Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/37

SO many pictures which are now in the dwellings of different Florentine citizens, that I remain sometimes in astonishment, and am at a loss to comprehend how one man could so perfectly execute all that he has performed, even though he did labour many years. The very reverend Don Vincenzio Borghini, superintendent of the Innocenti, is in possession of a small picture of the Virgin by the hand of this father, which is beautiful; and Bartolommeo Gondi, as zealous an amateur of these arts as any gentleman that I know, has a large picture, a small one, and a crucifix, all by the same hand. The paintings in the arch over the door of San Do menico are likewise by Fra Giovanni,^[1] and in Santa Trinita there is a picture in the sacristy, representing a deposition from the cross, to which he devoted so much care that it may be numbered among the best of his works.^[2]

In San Francesco, without the gate of San Miniato, Fra Giovanni painted an Annunciation,^[3] and in Santa Maria Novella, in addition to the works from his hand already enumerated, are certain stories, decorating various reliquaries which it is the custom to place on the altar in high solemnities, with others which are used in the Easter ceremonies.^[4]

In the abbey of the same city (Florence), this master painted the figure of San Benedetto, in the act of commanding silence.^[5] II For the Guild of Joiners, he executed a picture which is preserved in the house of their Guild,^[6]

engraved in La Galleria delle belle arti di Firenze, and the whole series, thirty-six in number, had been previously engraved by Nocchi of Florence. —Ed. Flor. 1849.

1. They are no longer to be seen,
2. Now in the Academy of the Fine Arts in Florence.
3. The fate of this Annunciation is not known.
4. We learn from the Memorie of the Father V. Marchese that these reliquaries were four; three only now remain in Santa Maria Novella, and these are kept under crystal in the press or armory of the relics, a care which they well merit, as well for the name of the master as for the beauty of the work.
5. A half-length, still to be seen over a door which has been walled up in the small cloister; but except the head and hands, little now remains uninjured by dust, humidity, and restoration. Cinelli, Bellezze di Firenze, attributes this work to Masaccio, but with manifest error.
6. The picture painted for the Joiners should rather be called a Tabernacle: it is now in the Gallery of the Uffizj, at the entrance of the eastern corridor, and bears the date 1433. The gradino, or predella of this tabernacle is also in the Uffizj.