Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/221

Rh upon. In one of these sovereigns, represented on horseback, Andrea has painted the likeness of Uguccione della Faggiuola of Arezzo; it is the figure who is holding his nose with one hand, to avoid the odour of the dead and putrid bodies. In the centre of the picture is Death, robed in black, and flying through the air; the form is that of a woman, and she clearly intimates that by her scythe, the crowds lying dead on the earth beneath her have been deprived of life. All states and conditions are there: rich and poor, young and old, men and women; the strong and blooming, together with the sick and faded, some of every age in short, and all in large numbers. And as Andrea knew that the Pisans were pleased with the invention of Buffalmacco, who caused the figures of Bruno, in San Paolo a Bipa d'Arno, to speak, by making the words issue from their mouths, so he filled his whole work with such inscriptions, the greater part of which have been destroyed by time, and are no longer intelligible; among some still legible, are the following, uttered by old crippled men, whom he has made to exclaim as below:—

with other words that cannot be deciphered, and verses in the old manner, composed, as I find, by Orgagna himself, who gave his attention to poetry also, and occasionally wrote a sonnet. Around these dead bodies devils are moving; they busily tear the souls of the departed from their mouths, and carry them off to certain fiery gulfs, seen at the summit of a very high mountain: opposite to these devils are angels, who approach others of the dead, which have manifestly belonged to the good, and in like manner, drawing the souls from their mouths, they bear them flying to Paradise. On a scroll, supported by two angels, the following verses are written: