Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/208

172 says Vasari, "immense enough to discourage a whole legion of masters." But Benozzo was not the man to shrink from any work, however arduous, and the twenty-four large frescoes which he painted during the next sixteen years, on the wall of the Campo Santo, show that, whatever the limitations of his art might be, his invention was as fertile, his fancy as fresh and bright as ever. The first and best of the series, a work to which Benozzo devoted more time and pains than usual, and which he only finished by the end of the year 1468, is called the Drunkenness of Noah. But although Ham is seen in the corner jeering at the sleeping patriarch and the famous figure of the Vergognosa di Pisa, looking back through the fingers of her hand, stands in the background, this subject is only an episode in the picture, which is really a charming representation of a Tuscan vintage. We see the peasants trampling on the fruit in the wine-press, the youths and maidens picking the purple grapes, which hang in luxuriant profusion from the pergola above, and carrying them in baskets on their heads, while Noah and his wife, as proprietors of the vineyard, taste the new-made wine, and two frightened children, who have been attacked by a barking dog, take shelter behind the folds of the patriarch's robe. The same pastoral scenes, the same free and joyous country life, enliven the later subjects. Youths and maidens dance hand in hand at Rachel's wedding-feast, shepherds stand at the doors of their tents counting their flocks, young mothers nurse their babes in the shade of cypress and palm, or lead their little ones, as they go to draw water from the well. Elsewhere we meet with troops of hunters bearing falcons on