deration of its beauty and excellence, carried it to be copied by the French Prior,[1] as we shall relate in the proper place.[2] Lazzaro Vasari also laboured in the church of the Servites at Perugia, where he executed certain stories from the life of the Virgin, and also a Crucifix, in a chapel near the sacristy. In the deanery of Montepulciano, he painted the predella of an altar in small figures; and at Castiglione, near Arezzo, is a picture in distemper by his hand; this is in the church of San Francesco.[3] Many other works he also executed which I will not take space to enumerate, more particularly coffers, or caskets, which he decorated with small figures: many of these are now to be seen in the dwellings of different citizens. In the Guelphic Council of Florence,[4] among the old arms collected there, are to be found various caparisons for horses extremely well painted by Lazzaro Vasari.[5] For the brotherhood of San Sebastian, he painted their patron-saint on a gonfalon, or banner. St. Sebastian is represented bound to the column, and surrounded by angels, who place on his head the crown of martyrdom; but this work is much injured and corroded by time.
At the period when Lazzaro Vasari flourished, many glass windows were painted an Arezzo by Fabiano Sassoli,[6] a youth of great excellence in that branch of art, as we find proved in certain works of his which are in the Episcopal Church, the Abbey, the Deanery, and other buildings of that city; but Fabiano not being well acquainted with design, his works were far from attaining to the perfection of those
- ↑ Guglielmo de Marcillat (William of Marseilles). The Gonfalon, painted by Lazzaro Vasari, is lost; the copy here alluded to was executed in two pictures which are now in a chapel belonging to the chapter-house of the cathedral, and situate in that part called the Duomo Vecchio.
- ↑ In the life of Guglielmo de Marcillat, or da Marsiglia, which follows.
- ↑ “From the best information that we can obtain,” observe the latest Florentine commentators (1849), “it is to be feared that this work is lost.”
- ↑ La Parte Guelfa. This was a magistracy invested with unlimited powers of control over the political opinions of the Florentines, and all within the Florentine dominion. A sort of political inquisition, whose business it was to see that the liege people of the pope-devoted city remained good Guelphs. — German Edition of Vasari, vol. ii. p. 359.
- ↑ These things are now lost.
- ↑ In Bottari’s time many of Sassoli’s works remained, as he assures us in Arezzo.
