Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/166

158 where they but rarely paint on wood of the maple or poplar, as is usual in other places. This wood, which grows for the most part along the banks of rivers or other waters, is very soft, and is excellent for painting on, because it holds very firmly when joined properly with suitable glue. But in Venice they do not paint on panel, or, if they use it occasionally, they take no other wood than that of the fir, which is most abundant in that city, being brought thither, along the river Adige, in large quantities from Germany; to say nothing of that which also comes from Sclavonia. It is the custom, then, in Venice to paint very much on canvas, either because that material does not so readily split, is not liable to clefts, and does not suffer from the worm, or because pictures on canvas may be made of such size as is desired, and can also be conveniently sent whithersoever the owner pleases, with little cost and trouble. Be the cause what it may, the first works of Jacopo and Gentile were on cloth, as we have said; and afterwards Gentile, without any assistance, added seven or eight pictures to that story of the Miracle of the Cross of which mention has been made above. In these works Gentile delineated the miracle performed in respect of the true cross of Christ, a piece of which the Scuola, or Brotherhood, above named, preserved as a relic, and which miracle took place as follows. The cross was thrown, I know not by what chance, from the Ponte della Paglia into the canal; when many persons, from the reverence which they bore to the piece of the true cross of Jesus Christ contained within it, threw themselves into the water to get it out. But it was the will of God that none should be found worthy to take it thence, save only the Principal or Guardian of the said Brotherhood: Gentile, therefore, repre-