Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/287

Rh another on his back, and whips the latter so cruelly with his rod, that the poor boy, kicking with the pain and crying out, seems attempting to bite the ear of the one who holds him; all this Gherardo has expressed with a most life-like truth, as was his custom in all that he painted, however whimsical and eccentric the scenes to be delineated. In like manner and with equal truth Starnina has pourtrayed the circumstances connected with the death-bed of San Girolamo. The saint, who is on the point of death, is dictating his testament; many monks, painted with admirable force and beauty, are around him, some of whom Gherardo represents writing, while others, fixedly regarding and earnestly listening to their master, seem to be storing up all his words with the utmost reverence and affection. This work, having acquired fame and rank among artists for the painter, while his agreeable manners and character had won him a great reputation, the name of Gherardo became renowned throughout Tuscany, or rather through all Italy. He was consequently invited to Pisa, to paint the chapter-house of San Hiccolo in that city; but, unwilling to leave Florence, he sent Antonio Vite of Pistoja in his stead: and this Antonio, having studied his art under Starnina himself, had acquired the manner of that master, and executed a picture of the Crucifixion in the aforesaid chapter-house, completing it, after the fashion which we now see, in the year 1403, to the great satisfaction of the Pisans. Gherardo finished the chapel of the Pugliesi, as we have said, and the stories from the life of San Girolamo, which he executed therein, were highly appreciated by the Florentines; the painters preceding him never having expressed the various affections there displayed, as he had done, nor did the attitudes of earlier masters equal the grace of those there seen. In the year 1406, therefore, when Gabriel Maria, lord of Pisa, sold that city to the Florentines for 200,000 scudi, (after Giovanni Gambacorta had sustained a siege