their pediments, cornices, &c., all turn in a perfect round, as does the opening space of the door, which is much in the manner of those entrances formed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the chapels of the church of the Angeli at Florence, a thing exceedingly difficult to do.
Above the first range of columns, San Michele also constructed a gallery which is continued entirely around the chapel, the columns and capitals of the same being enriched with exquisite carvings, and every part in effect being decorated with foliage, grottesche, and other ornaments, all sculptured with indescribable care and pains. The door of the chapel, a very beautiful one, is of the Corinthian order, and has a quadrangular form on the outside, resembling, as San Michele averred, an antique example which he had seen in some building at Rome. It is true that the edifice, having been left unfinished by Michele, for what cause I know not, whether from avarice or want of judgment on the part of those who had given him the commission, was suffered to be brought to a close by others, and these people spoiled it, to the infinite vexation of San Michele, who beheld his work ruined under his eyes in his own lifetime, he being able to do nothing for the prevention of that wrong; wherefore he would sometimes lament over this with his friends, declaring that he grieved only because he did not possess so many thousands of, ducats as would have enabled him to buy the chapel and so deliver the work from the avarice of a woman, who, to avoid spending the amount required, was most shamefully spoiling the whole.[1]
The design of the round church of the Madonna di Campagna near Verona,[2] was also by San Michele and was a very beautiful one, although the miserable weakness and
- ↑ “Now this,” declares an upright commentator of our author, whose protest in the cause of justice we gladly reproduce, “is not to be understood as in reproach of the good Margherita Pellegrini, the foundress; since she, knowing she could not live to complete the work, took care to recommend that Office to her heirs. Vasari must therefore be understood here to be speaking of an avaricious woman among those heirs to whom the completion of the work had been committed, and it is certain that the chapel was finished in a manner so unworthy of its commencement, that the architect Giuliari found his task of restoring it to anything like what San Michele designed, to be a very difficult one.”
- ↑ Situate on the high road to Venice, and at the distance of about a mile and a half from Verona.
