Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/95

Rh as an excellent master, where he was employed in the chapel of the high altar of, as well as in that of. He was also invited to Pisa, where he commenced the Evangelists, and other works, still to be seen in the apse of the choir of that cathedral ; they are in his usual manner, and he was assisted in their execution by Andrea Tafi and ; these mosaics were afterwards completed by Vicino, Jacopo having left them in a very unfinished state. The works of these masters continued for some time to be held in esteem ; but when the productions of came to be compared with those of Andrea, Cimabue, and the rest, as will be related at the proper place, people began to form a better judgment of art, perceiving the difference between the first manner of Cimabue and that of Giotto, in the figures of the one and of the other, as well as in those of their scholars and imitators. Commencing from this point, artists then began, by degrees, to follow the guidance of the better masters, and happily surpassing each other more and more from day to day, they have thus brought the arts from such mean condition to the summit of that perfection to which we now see them exalted. Andrea Tafi lived to the age of eighty-one, and died before Cimabue, in the year 1294. The fame and honour acquired by Andrea from his mosaics—he having first brought the art, in its improved manner, into Tuscany, and taught it to the Florentine artists—induced Gaddo Gaddi, Giotto, and others, to give it their attention, and to execute those admirable works, in that branch of art, by which they have gained themselves everlasting name and renown. There was not wanting one who magnified the merits of Andrea, after his death, by the following inscription :— “Quì giace Andrea, ch’opre leggiadre e belle Fece in tutta Toscana, ed ora è ito A far vago lo regno delle stelle.” Among the scholars of Andrea was, who, while still very young, played him many a mischievous trick ; to him he presented the portrait of Pope