Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/297

Rh which he had produced those admired works, was preserved, with the utmost veneration, in a tabernacle, together with that of another monk called Don Silvestro, who adorned the same books with miniatures, no less excellent—the knowledge of those times considered—than the writings of Don Jacopo. I have myself often examined these books, and have been astonished at the accuracy of design, and beauty of execution displayed in works of a period when the arts of design were almost wholly lost, for the productions of these monks date from about the year of our salvation 1350, a little more or a little less, as may be seen on any one of the books themselves. It is said, and there are still some old men who remember the fact, that when Pope Leo X came to Florence, he demanded to see these books, which he examined minutely, remembering to have heard them much praised by Lorenzo the Magnificent, his father. It is further related, that after he had considered them attentively, and with great admiration, as they all stood open upon the desks of the choir, he remarked, “If these works were according to the Romish Church, and not, as they are, according to the rule and custom of the monastic, and especially the Camaldoline order, we would gladly take certain portions of them (giving the just recompense to the monks) with us to Rome, for the church of San Piero.” Two very beautiful books, by the same monks, were indeed formerly in that cathedral, where they probably still remain. There are, moreover, many specimens of ancient embroideries, worked in a very beautiful manner, preserved in the same monastery of the Angeli. These also were done by the ancient fathers of that place, while they were shut up in perpetual seclusion, not bearing the name of monks, but that of hermits, and never coming forth from