Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/67

1335] death of its founder. For, in 1335, Giotto again left Florence, by order of the Signory, at the urgent request of their ally, Azzo Visconti, Lord of Milan. Here, in the old ducal palace on the Piazza of the Duomo, Giotto painted a series of frescoes, of which no trace remains, and then hurried back to Florence to resume his work on the Campanile. Another invitation reached him from Pope Benedict XII., who had heard of his fame from Petrarch, and offered him a large salary if he would take up his residence at the papal court at Avignon. But it was too late, and, as an old chronicler writes, "heaven willed that the royal city of Milan should gather the last fruits of this noble plant." Soon after his return Giotto fell suddenly ill, and died on the 8th of January 1337. He was buried with great honour in the Cathedral, and, by the devout care of his daughter Beatrice, masses were said for the repose of his soul in the parish church of his old home at Vespignano.

More than a hundred years later, when Florence had reached the height of splendour and prosperity under the rule of the Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent placed a marble bust on Giotto's tomb, and employed Angelo Poliziano to compose a Latin epitaph which gave proud utterance to the veneration in which the great master was held alike by his contemporaries and by posterity. "Lo, I am he by whom dead Painting was restored to life, to whose right hand all was possible, by whom Art became one with Nature. No one ever painted more or better. Do you wonder at yon fair Tower which holds the sacred bells? Know that it was I who bade her first rise towards