Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/412

398 and thrown into the sea. There is great power and life in this work, with many beautiful attitudes, exhibited more especially in the figures of those who lift the bodies, placed in sacks, upon their shoulders, to carry them to the sea, all their movements displaying infinite truth and animation. In the church of San Domenico, on the wall to the right of the high altar, Parri Spinelli painted a figure of the Virgin, with Sant’ Antonio, and San Niccolo, in fresco, for the family of the Alberti of Catenaia,nota of which place the Alberti were the lords until it was destroyed, when the family went to dwell, some in Arezzo, some in Florence. Now that those families settled in each city belong to one and the same house is demonstrated by the arms, which are the same for both. It is true that those of Arezzo are not called “degli Alberti,” but “da Catenaia,” and those of Florence not “da Catenaia,” but “degli Alberti.” I remember also to have heard and read that the abbey of the Sasso, in the mountains of the Catenaia, afterwards demolished and rebuilt lower down towards the Arno, was built by those same Alberti for the confraternity of the Camaldoline monks: this edifice is now in the possession of the monastery of the Angeli in Florence, who acknowledge it to be derived from that family, which is among the most noble in Florence. In the audience-chamber of the fraternity of Santa Maria della Misericordia,nota this master depicted the Virgin, with the people of Arezzo sheltered beneath her mantle; and in this picture are the portraits of the men who were at that time administrators of that pious place, taken from the life, and clothed as was customary in that day. Among these figures, is that of a member of the fraternity called Braccio, but who is called rich Lazarus (Lazzaro Ricco) by those who speak of him now-a-days, and who died in the year 1422,nota leaving all his riches and possessions to that institution which dispenses the same in the service of God’s poor, exercising the holy offices of mercy with true charity. On one side of this Madonna is the pontiff St. Gregory, and on the other is San Donato, bishop of Arezzo, and patron-saint of the Aretine people. Now the rulers for the time of that