Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/322

314 three coats of colour given one over the other) was applied, wherefore, in the gradual drying by time, they have become drawn throughout their thickness, with a force that has sufficed to produce these cracks; a fact that Pietro could not know or anticipate, since it was but in his time that the practice of painting well in oil first commenced.

The works of Pietro being much extolled by the Florentines, as we have said; a Prior of the same convent of the Ingesuati, who took great pleasure in the art, commissioned him to paint a Nativity on the walls of the first cloister, with the Adoration of the Magi, the figures extremely small, and this work he conducted to perfection with much grace and elegance. Among the heads, which are infinitely varied, are portraits from the life not a few, and one of these is the likeness of Andrea Verrocchio, Pietro’s master. In the same court, and over the arches resting on the columns, our artist executed a frieze wherein were heads of the size of life, and among them was that of the Prior himself, so life-like, and painted in so good a manner, that the best judges among artists have declared it to be the most perfect work ever performed by this master. In the second cloister, over the door leading into the refectory, he was likewise commissioned to paint an historical picture, the subject of which was Pope Boniface, confirming to the Beato Giovanni Colombino, the habit of his Order. Here Pietro painted the portraits oi eight of the monks, with a most beautiful perspective, receding in a manner which was greatly extolled, and deservedly so, for to these matters Pietro gave particular attention. Beneath this picture he commenced a second, representing the Birth of Christ, wdth angels and shepherds, the colouring of which was exceedingly fresh and lively. Over the door of the above described oratory also, he painted three halflength figures of Our Lady, St. Jerome, and the Beato Giovanni, in so fine a manner, that this was esteemed among the best of the mural paintings executed by Pietro. The Prior of this cloister, as I have been told, was very successful in the preparation of ultra-marine blues, and having them, from this circumstance, in good store, he ,