Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/46

32 ground of colour, as is made sufficiently manifest by a crowd of mosaics executed throughout Italy by these Greeks, and which may be seen in any old church of whatsoever city you please, through all the land. The cathedral of Pisa and St. Mark of Venice, and other places, will furnish examples. Thus, in this manner, they executed many pictures ; figures with senseless eyes, outstretched hands, standing on the points of their feet, similar to those that may still be seen in San Miniato, outside Florence, between the doors which lead to the sacristy and the convent. In the church of Santo Spirito, also, in the same city, the entire wall of the cloister on the side towards the church is covered with these works. They are to be found in Arezzo, also, in the churches of San Juliano,, and others : and in the historical scenes around the old church of San Pietro, in Rome, between the windows,—things that have more of the monster in their lineaments than of the object they should represent. In sculpture they produced works of a similar style and in equal plenty ; some of them, in basso-relievo, may still be seen over the gate of San Michele, in the Piazza Padella of Florence ; they are in the, and other places, frequently serving as ornaments to the doors of churches, where they sometimes act as corbels to support the canopy, but are withal so coarse and hideous, so deformed and ill-executed, that it seems impossible to imagine any thing worse.

Thus much I have thought it advisable to say respecting the first commencement of sculpture and painting, and may perhaps have spoken at greater length than was here needful; but this I have done, not so much because I was carried on by my love of art, as because I desire to be useful and serviceable to the whole body of artists, for they, having here seen the manner in which art proceeded from small beginnings, until she attained the highest summit, and next how she was precipitated from that exalted position into the deepest debasement ; and considering that it is the nature of art,