Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/309

Rh the city of Florence, and very small, should therefore be enlarged in proportion. He accordingly took counsel concerning the matter with Lorenzo di Bicci, who was his intimate friend, and on the 5th of September, in the year 1418, the new church was begun. This building was completed in the manner in which we now see it, within the space of one year, and was afterwards solemnly consecrated by Pope Martin V, at the prayer of the said Ser Michele, who was himself of the family of the Portinari, and was the eighth director of that hospital. The ceremonial of this consecration was then depicted by Lorenzo, as Ser Michele desired, on the façade of the church, where portraits of the Pope, and of several cardinals, taken from nature, are still to be seen. This work being a new and beautiful performance, was at that time very highly praised, and the artist obtained the privilege of being the first to execute paintings in the principal church of his native city, Santa Maria del Fiore, namely: here therefore, beneath the windows of each chapel, Lorenzo depicted the saint to whom the chapel was dedicated, after which, on the pilasters, and in different parts of the church, he painted the twelve Apostles, with the crosses of the consecration, that temple having been most solemnly consecrated in that same year by Pope Eugenius IY, who was a Venetian. The superintendants of the church then commissioned him, by command of the commune, to paint a tomb in fresco on the wall of the same church, in imitation of marble, to the memory of Cardinal Corsini, whose portrait, taken from nature, was painted on the sarcophagus, above which he executed a second of similar character, as a memorial of Maestro Luigi Marsili, a most famous theologian, wdio was sent as ambassador, with Messer Luigi Guicciardini, and