Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/408

394 at the same time, to establish a convent of one hundred nuns. Now for this convent Giorgio Vasari had made a well and carefully constructed model; but it was afterwards altered, or rather transformed into a miserable failure, by those who most unworthily received charge of the building. For it often happens that one stumbles upon crafty or conceited men, who are for the most part thoroughly ignorant, but who give themselves airs of pretence, and arrogantly presume to attempt the erection or superintendence of buildings, thereby frequently ruining the arrangements, and spoiling the models of men who have consumed their lives in the study and practice of the art, and who are fully capable of constructing judiciously such works as they undertake. These things occur, to the serious injury of posterity, which is thus deprived of the utility, convenience, beauty, and grandeur proper to all important fabrics, but more especially requisite to those which are to be used for the public service.

Parri Spinelli worked also in the church of San Bernardo, a monastery of the monks of Monte Oliveto, where he painted two chapels, being those immediately within the principal door, and standing one on each side of it. In that on the right hand, and which is dedicated to the Holy Trinity, the master painted a group, representing God the Father, who supports the body of Christ crucified in his arms; and above this is the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, surrounded by a choir of angels. On one of the walls of the same chapel he also painted figures of saints, in fresco, which are admirably done. The second chapel is dedicated to Our Lady, and here Spinelli has represented the Nativity of Christ, wherein are certain women who wash the Divine infant in a little wooden vessel; and in depicting this circumstance the artist has pourtrayed the figures with a feminine grace of action which is charming. There are also numerous shepherds in the distance, guarding their flocks: they are clothed in the rustic habiliments proper to that time, are full of life, and listen with the utmost attention to the words of the angel, who is commanding them to repair to Nazareth. On the opposite wall is the Adoration of the Magi; and here are depicted carriages of various kinds, with camels, giraffes, and all the camp and followers of those three kings; the latter, reverently offering their treasures, adore the infant Christ,