neutralized these advantages to a certain extent; of those defects it is, however, not here our purpose to speak further. As an Architect, Vasari stands deservedly higher than as a Painter; as the Historian of the Arts, he occupies a position, the eminence of which has never been approached; he is the source from which all other writers draw their best and most important materials, and no work on the subject he treated can be opened, but his name shall be found, and that to useful purpose, on every page. We conclude with a few words from Bottari, to whose magnificent edition of our author’s works, published at Rome in 1759, we are indebted for many of the most valuable among the notes given in the present volumes.
“Having returned to Florence, the master betook himself to the painting of the great Cupola of the Duorao, but did not finish more than the Prophets which are around the Lantern, because he was interrupted by death; wherefore the completion of the same was confided to Federigo Zucchero.[1]
“Vasari was in the sixty-third year of his age when he died; his remains were conveyed to his native city of Arezzo, where they were laid in the tomb of his family within the principal Chapel of the Decanal Church, which Chapel belongs to his house, and where very honourable obsequies were solemnized to his memory. His friends were almost all the learned men, and every distinguished artist of his time; while of the less distinguished he was himself the friend and protector.
Our Giorgio left behind him a very great reputation; more perhaps for the vast number than for the excellence of his pictures,[2] but the beauty and perfection of his architectural works are not to be denied, seeing that
- ↑ By whom, with the assistance of Passignano and others, it was finished after continual labour, in the year 1577* The compositions, wholly due to Vasari, will be found described by himself in the Ragionamento del Signor Cavaliere Giorgio Vasari, pittore ed architetto Aretino sopra le invenzioni da lui depinte in Firenza, nel Palazzo di Loro Altezze Serenissime, &c. It was published in Florence by the nephew of the master, also a “Giorgio Vasari,” in 1588, and was afterwards re-published under the title of Trattato della Pittura, &c.
- ↑ Had Vasari thought less of obliging those to whom he believed himself indebted for kindness, or felt bound by his duties, and more of his own reputation, the result might, or rather would, have been different.
