Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/44

30 chetto, there being then no other architects in Tuscany. To the façade of this church a marble portico was added with many ornaments and sculpture. Stories in memory of Pope Alexander II, of which erection, and of himself, Alexander amply discourses, describing all fully in nine Latin verses ; nay, we have the same engraved, with other ancient letters, on the wall under the portico and between the doors. In the above-named façade are various figures, and under the portico several stories in marble, executed in mezzo-rilievo. They represent the life of St. Martin, and are in the Greek manner ; but the best, which are over one of the doors, were executed 170 years later by, and finished in 1233, as shall be related in the proper place. The intendants of the church, when these works were commenced, were Abellenato and Aliprando, as we learn from certain letters engraved in the marble in the same place ; these figures, from the hand of Niccola Pisano, show to what extent the art of sculpture was ameliorated by him. The greater part of the buildings erected in Italy at this time, nay, we may almost say, the whole of them, were similar to this ; little or no improvement was perceptible in architecture from those days down to 1250 ; all had remained within the same limits, and continued to be executed in the same rude manner, of which numerous examples are still to be seen. But of these I will not now speak further, proposing to allude to them occasionally hereafter, as opportunity shall present itself.

In like manner, the best works in painting and sculpture, remaining buried under the ruins of Italy, were concealed during the same period, and continued wholly unknown to the rude men reared amidst the more modern usages of art, and by whom no other sculptures or pictures were produced, than such as were executed by the remnant of old Greek artists.

They formed images of earth and stone, or painted mon-