Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/137

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Among the artists who studied in the school of the sculptors and, the most distinguished were  and , of Siena, whose lives we are now about to write, and who became very excellent masters for those times. I find that their immediate progenitors were both of Siena, and that their ancestors were architects for many generations, insomuch that the fountain called was erected by them in the year 1190, under the government of the three consuls, while the custom-house and other buildings of Siena were constructed by the same masters in the following year, and under the same consulate. It may be truly said, that the seeds of talent in families, where they have been long implanted, will frequently germinate and throw out branches, which then produce better and richer fruit than had been obtained from the parent stock. This was the case with Agostino and Agnolo, who greatly ameliorated the manner of the Pisans, Giovanni and Niccola, enriching the art by more correct design and much improved invention, as their works make clearly manifest. We are told, that when the above-named Giovanni was returning from Naples, in the year 1284, he remained for some time at Siena to prepare the designs for the, and to commence that of the building wherein are the three principal doors, and which was to be richly adorned with sculptured marbles. At this time it was that Agostino, who was then but fifteen years of age, attached himself to Giovanni for the purpose of studying sculpture, of which he had already acquired the first principles, and to which he was no less inclined than to architecture. Under the care of this master then, and by means of perpetual study, Agostino sur-