Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/102

88  of the erection of this church, now in the possession of the fathers of Santa Maria Novella, as well as in the history of Villani. I was unwilling to omit these few details respecting this church and convent, because they are among the principal and most beautiful of Florence ; and also, because there are found in them, as will be shown hereafter, many excellent works of the most renowned artists that have lived in earlier times.

Among the other old painters, in whom the praises justly accorded to, and , his disciple, for those advances in art which were rendering their names illustrious through all Italy, awakened alarm for their own reputation, was a certain, a painter, who, with the others that had held the first place in art during that unhappy age, now perceived that the works of these masters must well-nigh extinguish his fame. This Margaritone being in high estimation among the painters who then worked in the Greek manner, executed many pictures in distemper, at Arezzo, as also many others in fresco, having nearly covered the church of San Clemente with numerous paintings in that manner, at great cost of time and labour. This church was an abbey of the order of Camaldolites, and has been totally