seen in his house.[1] It is said that while seeking for vases in a place where he believed the ancient makers to have worked, Giorgio Vasari discovered three arches of an old oven, buried three braccia deep beneath the surface, in a field of clay near the bridge of Calciarella, a village so called.[2] Around these arches he likewise found portions of the proper mixtures peculiar to that manufacture, with many broken vases, and four still remaining entire. These last were presented by Giorgio, through the intervention of the bishop Gentile, of Urbino,[3] to the Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici, when the latter visited Arezzo: a circumstance which gave rise to, and was the commencement of that attachment to the service of the illustrious house of Medici, in which he ever afterwards passed his life. Giorgio worked extremely well in basso-rilievo, as may be seen from certain heads by his hand still remaining in his house.[4] He had five sons, who all pursued the same occupation; among them were two, Lazzaro and Bernardo, who were good artists; the latter died at Rome while still young, and it is certain, from the talent early displayed by him, that he would have done honour to his native land had not death so prematurely overtaken him.
Lazzaro, the elder, died in 1452; as did Giorgio his son, who attained to the age of sixty-eight years, in 1484. They were both interred in the capitular-church of Arezzo, at the lower end of their own chapel of San Giorgio, where, in process of time, the following verses were appended in honour of Lazzaro
Rebus in angustis, in tenuique labor.
Vix operum istius partes cognoscere possis:
Myrmecides taceat: Callicrates sileat."
Finally, the last Giorgio Vasari,[5] the narrator of these events, grateful for the benefits which he acknowledges him-
- ↑ These are now lost, or perhaps destroyed.
- ↑ Situate without the gate of San Lorentino.
- ↑ Gentile da Urbino, Bishop of Arezzo, had previously been preceptor to Lorenzo the Magnificent.
- ↑ These heads are also lost.
- ↑ Giorgio, the biographer, was not the last Vasari of that name. The son of his brother, Ser Piero, was also called Giorgi. He was a knight of the order of St. Stephen, and in 1590 he wrote the Priorista Fiorentino.
