Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/163

Rh tised, and judicious master, not of Tuscany only, but of all Italy. Hereupon he set himself to work with the firm resolve to spare neither time, labour, nor care, that this important undertaking might be successfully completed; and fortune was so propitious to his efforts, that, although in those times they possessed none of the secrets in the art of casting with which we are now acquainted, yet in twenty-two years the work was brought to that perfection in which we see it. Nay, more, wdthin this same period the master not only executed the tabernacle of the high altar of St. John, with the angels standing one on each side of it, which arc considered extremely beautiful, but also completed, after the designs of Giotto, those small figures in marble which adorn the door of the campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore; while around the tower he placed the seven planets, the seven virtues, and the seven wrorks of mercy, in oval compartments, and represented by small figures in mezzo-rilievo, which were then very much praised. Andrea further executed, within the above-named period, the three figures, each four braccia high, which were placed in the recesses beneath the windows of the same campanile, looking towards the orphan-house, on the southern side that is to say, and which wrere at that time considered to be very wrell done. But to return to the point whence I departed. In the bronze door which I wras describing, are represented stories from the life of St. John the Baptist in basso-rilievo: they extend from his birth to his death, and are very happily and carefully executed. And although many are of opinion that this work does not exhibit the beauty of design and perfection of art required for such figures, yet is Andrea deserving of the highest praise for having been the first to attempt and bring to completion an undertaking which rendered it possible to those who came after him to produce the beautiful and arduous wrorks which