Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/353

Rh the most part, to the contrary, as we have said above, even though a certain exterior and apparent delicacy of manner (which is often a mere concealment, by industry, of defects in essential qualities) should sometimes obtain the suffrages of the unthinking vulgar more readily than the really good work, which is the product of ability and judgment, though not externally so delicately finished and furbished. But to return to Luca: when he had completed the above named decorations, which gave much satisfaction, he received a commission for the of the before-mentioned sacristy. his he divided into ten square compartments, or pictures (quadri), five, namely, on each side, and at all the angles where these joined he placed the head of a man, by way of ornament, on the border: no two heads were alike, some being young, others old, or of middle age; some with the beard, others without; all were varied, in short, and in these different modes every one was beautiful, of its kind, insomuch that the frame-work of that door was most richly adorned. In the compartments themselves, the master represented the Madonna (to begin with the upper part), holding the infant Christ in her arms, in the first square, a group of infinite grace and beauty; with Jesus issuing from the tomb, in that opposite. Beneath these figures, in each of the first four squares, is the statue of an Evangelist, and below the Evangelists are the four doctors of the church, who are all writing, in different attitudes. The whole work is so finely executed, and so delicate, that one clearly perceives how much Luca had profited by having been a goldsmith.

But when, at the conclusion of these works, the master made up the reckoning of what he had received, and compared this with the time he had expended in their production, he perceived that he had made but small gains, and that the labour had been excessive; he determined, therefore, to abandon marble and bronze, resolving to try if he could not derive a more profitable return from some other source. Wherefore, reflecting that it cost but little trouble to work in clay, which is easily managed, and that only one thing was