Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/57

Rh painter, and long dwelt in the house inhabited by his master, in the Via del Cocomero. Cimabue was entombed in Santa Maria del Fiore, the following epitaph being composed on him by one of the Nini : “Credidit ut Cimabos picturae castra tenere
 * Sic tenuit, vivens, nunc tenet astra poli.”

I will not omit to observe, that if the greatness of Giotto, his disciple, had not diminished the glory of Cimabue, his fame would have risen still higher, as Dante remarks in his Commedia, where, alluding, in the eleventh canto of the Purgatorio, to this inscription on the tomb, he says : “Credette Cimabue nella pintura
 * Tener lo campo, ed ora ha Giotto il grido,
 * Si che la fama di colui s’ oscura.”

Alluding to these verses, a commentator of Dante, who wrote while Giotto was still living—ten or twelve years after the death of Dante himself; that is, about the year 1334—has the following remarks. He is speaking of Cimabue, and these are his precise words: “Cimabue, of Florence, a painter of the time of our author, knew more of the noble art than any other man; but he was so arrogant and proud withal, that if any one discovered a fault in his work, or if he perceived one himself (as will often happen to the artist, who fails from the defects in the material that he uses, or from insufficiency of the instrument with which he works), he would instantly destroy that work, however costly it might be. Giotto, of that same city of Florence, was, and is, the most eminent of painters; and his works bear testimony for him in Rome, in Naples, at Avignon, Florence, Padua, and many other parts of the world.” This commentary is now in the hands of the Rev. Don Vincenzio Borghini, prior of the Innocents, a man not only illustrious for elevation of mind, for goodness, and for learning, but also a lover of, and so well