Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/321

Rh Giovannino. Of the two pictures by Pietro, which, as we have said, were on the above-mentioned screen, the one represented Christ in the Garden with the Apostles, who are sleeping; in this work Pietro shows how effectual a refuge is sleep from the cares and pains of life, he having depicted the disciples of Christ in attitudes of the most perfect ease and repose. The other painting is a Pieta, the Saviour lying dead that is, in the lap of Our Lady, around whom are four figures not inferior to others executed in the manner of that master. Among the various characteristics of this work, it is to be remarked that the figure of the Dead Christ here described is benumbed and stiffened, as if it had been so long on the cross that the time and cold had brought it to that appearance. St. John and the Magdalen, i In another picture, executed with infinite care, is the Saviour on the Cross, at the foot of which is the Magdalen, with St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist, and the Beato, Giovanni Colombini, the founder of that order to which the monks belonged. These three pictures have suffered considerably, in the shadows and on all the dark parts there are numerous cracks, and this has happened from the circumstance, that when the first colour was laid on the ground, it had not perfectly dried before the second (for there are