Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/276

234 progress of the work, however, was interrupted by the painter's second visit to Rome, and the fresco remained unfinished until 1485, for in October, 1481, Ghirlandajo was summoned with Botticelli and his comrades to take part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel. During the following year he painted a Resurrection over the doorway, which has been destroyed, and the well-known fresco of the Calling of St. Peter and St. Andrew. The influence of Masaccio is apparent in this carefully-arranged and well-balanced composition; the colour is clear and harmonious, and the landscape, with the wooded shores and lake of Gennesareth in the background, lends real beauty to the picture. As usual, a number of contemporary personages who take no part in the scene are introduced among the spectators on either side.

The greater part of the three years after the painter's return to Florence was devoted to the frescoes of the history of St. Francis with which he decorated the Chapel of the Sassetti in the Trinità. These six large compositions are Ghirlandajo's finest and most successful works. They display his consummate knowledge and mastery of the technical side of art, and show some attempt at dramatic action and expression. The artist had evidently studied Giotto's frescoes in Santa Croce with close attention and followed the same lines, especially in the Death of St. Francis. This last subject is rendered with a realism which excited Vasari's warmest admiration. "The careless indifference of the choristers forms a striking contrast to the grief of the weeping friars, and the mitred bishop, chanting the prayers for the dead, with spectacles on his nose, is so life-like that, but for the fact that we