Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/320

312 by those who came from the principal door of the convent, formed a view that was admirably beautiful. In the second cloister was a refectory, sixty braccia long and eighteen wide; with all the requisite chambers, or, as the monks call them, offices, which, in such a convent, are demanded. Over this was a dormitory in the form of the letter T, one part of which, the direct line, or principal part namely, which was sixty braccia long, was double, having cells on each side that is to say, and at the upper end, in a space of fifteen braccia, was an oratory, above the altar of which was a picture by the hand of Pietro Perugino. Over the door of this oratory, also, was another work by this master, the latter being in fresco, as will be related hereafter. On the same floor, but over the chapter-house, was a large room which those fathers used for the purposes of their glasspainting, and where they had their furnaces and other things needful to such an occupation. Pietro was therein very useful to them, for as while he lived he prepared them their cartoons for these works; so all that they performed in his time were excellent. The garden of this convent, moreover, was so well kept and so beautiful, the vines were so finely trained around the cloister, and all was so well managed, that nothing better could be seen either in Florence or around it. In like manner the place wherein the monks distilled odoriferous waters and prepared medicinal extracts, as was their custom, was supplied with all the conveniences that could possibly be imagined. This convent, in fine, was one of the most beautiful, most commodious, and best managed houses of religion in the whole state of Florence; wherefore it is that I have resolved to make this mention of the same: and this I have done the rather because the greater part of the paintings therein were by the hand of Pietro Perugino.

But returning, at length, to this Pietro, I proceed to say, that of the works performed by him in the above-described convent, nothing has been preserved but the pictures executed on panel, seeing that all those in fresco were destroyed in the siege of Florence, when the building was wholly demolished. The panel pictures, however, were carried to the gate of San Pier Gattolini, where those monks were provided with a refuge in the church and convent of San