Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/357

Rh decorated with ornaments in the glazed terra-cotta; it was executed in Florence, and afterwards sent to Naples: Luca being assisted in its completion by his brother Agostino. After these things, the master still sought to make further inventions, and laboured to discover a method by which figures and historical representations might be coloured on level surfaces of terra-cotta, proposing thereby to secure a more life-like effect to the pictures. Of this he made an experiment in a medallion, which is above the tabernacle of the four saints, near Or San Michele, on the plane of which our artist figured the insignia and instruments of the Guilds of Manufacturers, divided into five compartments, and decorated with very beautiful ornaments. In the same place he adorned two other medallions in relief; in one he placed a Madonna for the Guild of the Apothecaries, and in the other a lily on a bale, for the Tribunal of the Merchants, with festoons of fruit and foliage of different kinds, so admirably done that they seem rather to be the natural substance than merely burnt and painted clay. For Messer Benozzo Federighi, Bishop of Fiesole, Luca della Bobbia erected a, on which he placed the recumbent figure of Federigo, taken from nature, with three half-length figures beside; and between the columns which adorn this work, the master depicted garlands with clusters of fruit and foliage, so life-like and natural that the pencil could produce nothing better in oil-painting. This work is of a truth most rare and wonderful, the lights and shadows having been managed so admirably, that one can scarcely imagine it possible to produce such effects in works that have to be completed by the action of fire. And if this artist had been accorded longer life, many other remarkable works would doubtless have proceeded from his hands, since, but a short time before his death, he had begun to paint figures and historical representations on a level surface, whereof I formerly saw certain specimens in his house, which led me to believe that he would have suc-