Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/406

392 duced with greater facility, and a longer duration was secured to his paintings in fresco. Having laid the colours in their places, he afterwards harmonized and blended them with a large soft brush; and this he did with so much delicacy that nothing better can be desired, and certainly his colouring has no equal.

When Parri had been absent many years from his native city, he was recalled to Arezzo by his relations, on the death of his father; and there, among many works which it would occupy too much of our time to describe, he executed some that we must by no means pass over in silence. To these belong the three figures of the Virgin, each differing from the other, which he painted in fresco in the Duomo Vecchio, as also does the story of the Beato Tommasuolo, a confessor and hermit of that time, and a man of very holy life, which he painted in fresco within the principal door of the same church. It was the custom of this holy person to carry in his hand a mirror, within which he beheld, as he affirmed, the Passion of Christ. The master has therefore represented the Beato kneeling, with the mirror, which he raises towards heaven, in his right hand; while amidst the clouds above is Jesus Christ enthroned, with all the mysteries of the Passion around him; all which, with the most admirable art, he has given reflected in that mirror with such perfection that not the Beato Tommasuolo only, but all who look at the picture may behold them clearly. This was, without doubt, an extraordinary and difficult invention, and so admirably well executed, that many succeeding artists have been taught by it to produce various effects, and paint many subjects by means of a mirror. And, since we are speaking on this subject, I will not omit to mention a certain action of this holy man performed in the above-named city of Arezzo. Occupied with perpetual efforts to persuade the Aretines to live in peace with each other, he preached to them without ceasing on that subject, sometimes predicting to them the various misfortunes that could not fail to result from their discords. Perceiving at length that he wasted his time, the said Beato one day entered the palace, where the council of sixty was accustomed to assemble, and finding them, as usual, in those deliberations