Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/168

154 latter a portrait of Andrea, taken from the life. Nino also executed two marble statues for one of the altars of St. Catherine at Pisa. They represent the Virgin, with the Angel of the Annunciation, and, like his other works, are so carefully done, that they may justly be described as the best that those times had produced. On the pedestal of this Madonna, Nino carved the following words:—“ The first day of February 1370”; and beneath the angel he inscribed as follows:— “ Nino, the son of Andrea of Pisa, made this figure”. He executed other works, in Naples as well as in Pisa, but of these it is not needful to speak here. Andrea died in the year 1345, aged seventy-five years, and was buried by Nino in Santa Maria del Fiore, with the following epitaph:— “ Ingenti Andreas jacit hie Pisanus in urna Marmore qui potuit spirantes ducere vultus Et simulacra Deum mediis imponere templis Ex aere, ex auro candenti, et pulcro elephanto.”

The Florentine painter, Buonamico di Cristofano, called Buffalmacco, was a disciple of Andrea Tafi, and is celebrated by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio, in his Decameron, as a man of most facetious character. He was besides, as is well known, the intimate companion of Bruno and Calandrino,both painters of joyous life, and, like himself, exceedingly fond of their jest. Buonamico was moreover endowed with considerable judgment in his art, as his works, scattered throughout Tuscany, sufficiently prove. Among the three hundred stories of Franco Sacchetti, we find it related—to begin with what our artist did while still a youth—that whdn Buffalmacco was studying with Andrea Tafi, his master had the habit of rising before daylight when the nights were long, compelling his scholars also