Page:The painters of Florence from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century (1915).djvu/91

1430] waiting several years for his return, the Directors of the Campo Santo invited Antonio Veneziano to complete the series. A Venetian by birth, Antonio early became the assistant of Agnolo Gaddi, and matriculated in the Florentine Guild of Painters in 1374, after which he returned to Venice, and was employed to paint a fresco in the Hall of the Great Council. In spite of his merits, however, he failed to win the approval of his countrymen, and leaving Venice in disgust he came back to Florence, where he executed many works in the Certosa of Val d'Ema and other churches, which have now perished, and attained a well-deserved reputation. From 1384 to 1386, he lived at Pisa, in a house belonging to the Administration of the Cathedral Works, and received 210 florins for three frescoes representing the return of San Ranieri from the Holy Land, his death and the translation of his body to the Duomo, and the miracles wrought by his relics. The vigour and animation with which these subjects are illustrated, and the clearness and brightness of the few remnants of original colour that still remain, justify the high praise bestowed by Vasari on these works, which he pronounces to be the finest of all the frescoes painted by many excellent masters in the Campo Santo. The first subject is the best preserved and most successful, showing us, as it does, the galleys arriving in the harbour, with the wind swelling their sails, and the Saint's miraculous conversion of the inn-keeper, whom he convicts of mixing water with wine, at the suggestion of a demon seated in the form of a cat on the top of the barrel. Here again the architectural details are full of picturesque charm, and in the next