Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/198

184 in her arms, over the door of the superintendent’s room in that church. The attitude of this figure is very beautiful, and the angels which support a standard and hover around the Virgin while they turn their eyes towards certain saints who stand below, display much grace, and infinitely increase the beauty of the work. When all this was completed, Simon was invited to Florence by the General of the Augustines, where he painted the chapterhouse of Santo Spirito, evincing wonderful powers of invention and admirable judgment in his figures and horses, more particularly in representing the Crucifixion, a work of which every part has been executed with mature consideration and extreme grace of manner. In this painting the thieves on the cross are seen expiring, the soul of the repentant thief being joyfully borne to heaven by the angels, while that of the impenitent departs, accompanied by devils, and roughly dragged by these demons to the torments of hell. Equal powers of invention and similar judgment are evinced by this master in the attitudes of other angels standing around the crucifix, and their grief is eloquently expressed by their bitter weeping, but remarkable above all is the manner in which these spirits seem visibly to cleave the air, while, turning almost in a circle, they still sustain the movement of their flight. We should indeed have much more satisfactory proof of the excellence of Simon in that work, had it not, in addition to the injuries received from time, been further spoiled by the monks of the convent in the year 1560: for these fathers, unable to use the chapterhouse on account of its humidity, constructed an arch to replace some worm-eaten wood-work, in doing which they ruined what little yet remained of this master’s paintings. About the same time Simon painted a picture of the Virgin with St. Luke and other saints, in distemper; this is now in the chapel of the Gondi in Santa Maria Novella, and bears the name of the master. He also painted three of the walls of the chapter-house of Santa Maria Novella, a very successful work. On the first wall, over the door of entrance, he depicted the Life of San Domenico; and on that which