who approached him, playing the strangest tricks, and performing the most extraordinary concerts ever seen or heard, insomuch that the dwelling of this man seemed like the very ark of Noah.
This unusual manner of living, the strangeness of his proceedings, with his works and pictures, some of which were certainly very good ones, caused Giovan-Antonio to have such a name among the Sienese (with the base and low that is to say, for those of higher condition judged him better), that he was held by many to be a great man. Wherefore Fra Domenico da Leccio, a Lombard, being made General of the monks of Monto Oliveto, and Giovan-Antonio, going to visit him at Monte Oliveto di Chiusuri, the principal abode of that Order, distant about fifteen miles from Siena, found so much to say and used so many persuasions, that he received commission to finish the stories which had been partly executed on a wall of that monastery by Luca Signorelli of Cortona.[1] The subject which had been chosen was from the life of San Benedetto, and Razzi undertook the work for a very low price, with the addition of his expenses and that of certain boys, colour grinders and other assistants, by whom he was attended. But the amusement which those fathers found in his proceedings while he worked in that place is not to be told, nor could one easily describe the pranks which he played there,[2] insomuch that the monks then bestowed on him that name of Mattaccio, before alluded to, in requital of his follies.[3]
Returning to the work itself, however, Giovan-Antonio, having finished certain stories in a manner which showed
- ↑ Luca Signorelli suffered them to remain unfinished, because he was summoned to Orvieto, there to paint the Chapel of the Madonna in San Brizio.— Note to the German Translation of Vasari.
- ↑ The Abbate Perini, Lettera sull'Archicenobio di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, Florence, 1788, remarks that Vasari would make it appear that the works executed by Razzi at Monte Oliveto were “full of absurdities and offences, whereas they breathe the purest spirit of devotion;” but Vasari’s words bear no such interpretation, as our readers will clearly perceive; they refer to the absurdities and follies he perpetrated, and not to ridiculous or unbecoming subjects painted by him.
- ↑ Della Valle excuses the painter for the follies here reproved, and
quotes in his behalf the words of Seneca;—
Nullum fuit magnum ingenium absque aliqua admiratione dementiae.
