Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/272

258 quired by his Florentine labours, caused the council of sixty citizens, by which Arezzo was governed, to recal him. to that city, where he was appointed by the commune to paint the Adoration of the Magi, in the church of the Duomo Vecchio, without the walls of Arezzo, together with the story of St. Donatus destroying a serpent by the force of his word, in the chapel of San Gismondo. He further painted various figures on some of the pilasters of that Duomo, and on one of the walls he represented the Magdalen in the house of Simon anointing the feet of Christ, with other pictures, of all which we need make no further mention, since that ancient temple, once filled with sepulchral monuments, bones of saints, and other memorable things, is now totally destroyed. I will, nevertheless, here record, that some remembrance at least may be retained of it, that this building was erected by the people of Arezzo more than thirteen hundred years since, when they were first converted to the faith of Christ by St. Donatus, who was afterwards bishop of the citv. The church was dedicated to his name, and was enriched, both inside and out, with the spoils of antiquity. The ground plan of this building, of which we have elsewhere spoken at length, was divided externally into sixteen parts, but within the church, these divisions were eight only; all were filled with the spoils of the temples which had previously been dedicated to idols. To be brief, this church, at the time when it was demolished, was as beautiful as it was possible that any temple could be.

After the many pictures he had painted in the Duomo, Spinello worked in the church of San Francesco, where he depicted Pope Honorius approving and confirming the rule of the saint in the chapel of the Marsupini, and here he drew the portrait of Pope Innocent IV, from nature, having by some means obtained the likeness of that pontiff. In the same church he also painted various stories of St. Michael the archangel, in the chapel dedicated to that saint, which is now used as the belfry; and a little below, in the chapel of Messer Giuliano Baccio, Spinello painted an Annunciation,