Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/141

Rh and placed as are the balls in the arms of the Medici. These armorial bearings of the bishop are described by the Frate Guittone, a knight and poet of Arezzo, who is writing of the castle of Pietramala, whence the family took its origin, in the following terms:—

In the execution of this work, a higher degree of inventive power and greater care in execution were exhibited by Agostino and Agnolo, than had been displayed in any previous undertaking of that time, and they certainly did merit high praise for the great variety of sites, towns, towers, castles, horses, men, and other objects, with the vast crowd of figures of all kinds, which render the work a true marvel. This tomb was almost entirely destroyed by the French, under the Duke of Anjou, who, to avenge themselves for certain affronts offered by the party inimical to them, sacked the city; it is nevertheless manifest, that the work was executed by Agostino and Agnolo with very great ability. The following words were carved on it by them, in letters of moderate size:—“Hoc opus fecit magister Augustinus et magister Angelus de Senis.” At a later period, in the year 1329 namely, the same artists executed a marble altar for the church of San Francesco, in Bologna; the work is in a tolerably good manner, and in addition to the intagliatura, which is very rich, they adorned it with a figure of Christ crowning the Virgin, one braccia and a half high, with three figures of similar height on each side. San Francesco, San Jacopo, and San Domenico, on the one side, with Sant’ Antonio of Padua, San Petronio, and St. John the Evangelist on the other; beneath each of these figures is carved a scene in basso-rilievo, representing events in the life of the saint above; and in all these historical representations is a large number of half-figures, which form a rich and beautiful ornament, in the manner of that time. It is clearly obvious,