Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/263

Rh to be the best of all the various productions executed in that place, during so long a series of years, by so many excellent masters.

In addition to the many admirable qualities hitherto attributed to this master, may be further adduced the fact, that he executed his whole work in fresco, and never retouched any portion of it when dry. One consequence of this being, that the colours of his paintings remain fresh and life-like to the present day. And herein they may serve as a lesson to artists, teaching them the great injury done to fresco paintings by retouching them with other colours when they are dry. For we find it proved, beyond a doubt, that the pictures, so retouched, acquire a look of age, and are yet deprived of all the purifying effects of time; for being thus covered with colours which have a different body from those beneath, and which are tempered with gums, astragacanth, or eggs, glue, and other matters of similar character, which cloud and tarnish the colours below, the lapse of time and the action of the air are prevented from exercising their purifying influence over that which is really worked in fresco on the wet stucco, as they would have done, if these colours had not been afterwards laid on dry. After having completed this undertaking, for which, as indeed worthy of all praise, he was honourably rewarded by the Pisans, Antonio returned to Florence, where he painted a tabernacle at Nuovoli, outside the gate leading to Prato, for Giovanni degli Agli. The subjects are a Dead Christ, the Adoration of the Magi, with numerous figures, and a Last Judgment; all extremely beautiful. He was afterwards invited to the Certosa, where he painted the picture of the high altar for the family of the Acciaiuoli, who had built that convent. This work was consumed by fire in our own day, in consequence of the carelessness of a sexton, who, having left the thurible full of embers suspended to the altar, caused the picture to be burnt. The altar was then reconstructed by the monks, entirely of marble, as we now see it. In the same place, and on a wardrobe or press in the same chapel, Antonio painted a transfiguration of Christ, in fresco, which is very beautiful. Our artist had meanwhile been always strongly disposed to