Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/53

Rh beyond the choir, he painted certain passages from the history of the Virgin, in four compartments,—her death, when her soul is borne by Christ to Heaven upon a throne of clouds, —and her coronation, when he places the crown on her head in the midst of a choir of angels ; numerous saints, male and female, standing below ; works now nearly obliterated by time and dust. In the vaults of the roof, which are five, Cimabue depicted various historical scenes in like manner. In the first, over the choir, he placed the four Evangelists, larger than life, and so well done, that even in our days they are admitted to possess much merit, the freshness of colouring in the flesh-tints proving that painting in fresco was, thanks to the labours of Cimabue, beginning to make important advances. The second vault he adorned with golden stars on a ground of ultramarine. In the third he painted, in medallions, Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mother, St. John the Baptist, and St. Francis, that is, a figure in each medallion, and a medallion in each bay of the vault. Between this and the fifth vault, he painted the fourth, also in stars of gold on a ground of ultramarine, like the second. In the fifth he placed the four Doctors of the Church, and beside each of the Doctors stood a brother of one of the four principal religious orders ; without doubt, a most laborious work, and executed with extreme diligence. When the vaults were completed, Cimabue next painted the upper part of the wall of the north aisle, also in fresco, through the whole length of the church. Near the high altar, and in the space between the windows entirely up to the roof, he painted eight historical pictures from the Old Testament, beginning with the early chapters of Genesis, and taking the most prominent events in due order. Around the windows, and to the point where they terminate in the allery which encircles the interior of the building, he depicted the remaining portions of the Old Testament in eight other historical scenes. Opposite to these pictures, and also in sixteen compartments, he painted the lives of the Virgin and of Jesus Christ; while on the end façade, below, over