Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/51

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Having afterwards undertaken to paint a large picture in the abbey of the Santa Trinita in Florence, for the monks of Vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already formed of him, and evinced improved powers of invention in that work, and displayed a fine manner in the attitudes of the Virgin, whom he depicted with the child in her arms, and with numerous angels, in the act of worship, around her ; on a gold ground. The picture being finished, was placed by the monks over the high-altar of the church, whence, being afterwards removed to give place to that work of Alexis Baldovinetti, which remains there to this day, it was placed in a smaller chapel of the south aisle of the same church.

Cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the Porcellana, at the corner of the Via Nuova, which leads into the Borgo Ogni Santi. On the front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he painted the Virgin receiving the annunciation from the angel, on one side, and Jesus Christ, with Cleophas, and Luke, on the other ; all figures of the size of life. In this work he departed still more decidedly from the dry formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to the draperies, vestments, and other accessories, and rendering all more flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those Greeks, whose works were full of hard lines and sharp angles, as well in mosaic as in painting. And this rude, unskilful, and common-place manner, the Greeks had acquired, not so much from study or of settled purpose, as from having servilely followed certain fixed rules and habits, transmitted through a long series of years, by one painter to another down to those times, while none ever thought of the amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the improvement of his invention. This work being completed, Cimabue was again summoned by the same prior, who had employed him for the works of Santa