Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/148

134 stairs, of very difficult execution. These, whether painted or erected, were so excellent in design, displayed so much invention, and were so commodious, that they served as the model to the magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici the elder, when he constructed the external staircase of the palace of Poggio a Cajano, now the principal villa of the most illustrious our lord the duke. In the third arch, is the story of Christ saving St. Peter from shipwreck, so perfectly done, that the spectator fancies he hears the voice of Peter crying, “Domine salva nos, perimus.” This painting is considered much superior to the others; for, besides the graceful flow of the draperies, there is great sweetness in the air of the heads, with manifest terror of the sea: the attitudes of the apostles also, agitated by various emotions and by the marine ohenomerfa around them, are entirely appropriate and extremely fine. The work is partly destroyed by time, yet we clearly perceive the energy with which the apostles are defending themselves from the fury of the winds and waves. The painting has been greatly commended by the moderns, and at the time when it was completed, must certainly have seemed something wonderful to all Tuscany. At a later period, Stefano painted a St. Thomas Aquinas in the first cloister of Santa Maria Novella, and near one of the doors; where he also executed a Crucifixion, which has been greatly injured by other painters, who have attempted to restore it. .