Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/307

Rh principal chapel. These paintings gave so much satisfaction to the whole city, that when the master had finished them he was commissioned by the Salvestrini family (which is now entirely extinct, since there does not remain, to my knowledge, any other member of it than a monk of the Angeli of Florence, called Fra Nemesio, a good and upright man), to paint one of the walls in the church of the Carmine. Here Lorenzo depicted certain martyrs, who, having been condemned to death, are despoiled of their clothing, and compelled to walk barefooted to the place of their punishment, over thorns and thistles, which the minions of the persecutors are strewing on their path. In another portion of the work the martyrs are seen in varied and distorted attitudes, placed each on his cross. This picture, which was the largest that had then been executed, was completed in all its parts with so much accuracy of design and facility of treatment, according to the degree of knowledge possessed by those times, that I do not wonder at the many distinguished artists who have found means to profit by the study of certain qualities to be seen in this work, many parts of it exhibiting, with much truth, all the various emotions awakened by nature in those who are made to suffer a violent death.

Having finished this undertaking, Lorenzo painted many other figures in the same church, with pictures in two chapels of the transept: and about the same time, he decorated the tabernacle at the corner of the Cuculia, with that which stands on the Via de’ Martelli, beside the houses. In the church of Santo Spirito, moreover, Lorenzo painted a fresco over the door of the Martello, the subject of which is Sant’ Agostino presenting to his monks the rule of their order. In the chapel of the Neri Compagni family, in the church of Santa Trinita, he also painted a fresco, representing stories from the life of San Giovanni Gualberto; and in the principal chapel of Santa Lucia, on the Via de’ Bardi, this master depicted certain stories, likewise in fresco, from the life of that saint, a work which he executed for Niccolo da Uzzano,