Gabriel approaching with the Annunciation to the Virgin. Ridolfo added a kind of landscape in the back ground, exhibiting the Piazza of the Nunziata in Florence, and continuing even to the Church of San Marco. The whole work is admirably executed, and has numerous and beautiful decorations; when it was finished our artist painted a picture which was placed in the Deanery of Prato, and represents Our Lady offering her girdle to St. Thomas, who is there seen, together with the other Apostles.[1]
For Monsignor de’ Bonafe, Director of the Hospital of Santa Maria Novella, and Bishop of Cortona, Eidolfo painted a picture to be placed in the Church of Ognissanti; the subject of this work was Our Lady, with San Giovanni Battista and San Eomualdo; and as the Bishop considered himself to have been served well and duly, he caused our artist to execute certain other paintings for him; but of these we need make no further mention. He next copied three pictures which had formerly been painted in the Medici palace by Anton Pollaiuolo, and the subjects of which were taken from the labours of Hercules; these Eidolfo painted for Giovambattista della Palla, by whom they were sent into France.
Having executed these and many other paintings, and finding in his possession all the requisites for mosaic-work, which had belonged to his uncle David, and to Domenico his father, Eidolfo, who had also acquired some knowledge of the processes to be pursued in that work, determined to make an attempt therein. Having completed certain pieces accordingly and finding that he succeeded, he then undertook to decorate in mosaic the arch which is over the door of the Church of the Nunziata, and in this he placed a figure of the Angel who is bringing the Annunciation to the Virgin;[2]
- ↑ Now in the chantry of the Cathedral at Prato. To have been exact, Vasari should have said, St. Thomas with other Saints, and not “other A postles,” since many of the figures do not represent apostles.—Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
- ↑ A compatriot of our author remarks that, although this fact, which Vasari may have received from Ridolfo himself, is not to be called in question, yet that it ought to have been mentioned earlier, and the mosaicplaced among the works executed during the lifetime of his uncle David, since it was certainly the last-named artist who received the commission for that work from the Monks, and who, if he permitted Ridolfo to execute
