Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/33

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One of the first paintings executed by this good father was a picture on panel for the Carthusian monastery in Florence, where it was placed in the principal chapel, which belonged to the cardinal Acciaiuoli: the subject is a Virgin with the Child in her arms, and with angels at her feet; the latter are sounding musical instruments and singing, and are exceedingly beautiful: on one side of the Virgin are San Lorenzo, with Santa Maria Maddalena; on the other are San Zanobi, with San Benedetto; and on the predella are stories from the lives of those saints, the figures of which are very small, and are executed with infinite care. In the same chapel are two other pictures by the same master, one representing the Coronation of the Virgin; and in the other are the Madonna, with two saints in ultra-marine blue, of great beauty. In the nave of Santa Maria Novella, and beside the door, which is opposite to the choir, Fra Giovanni afterwards painted a fresco, wherein he represented San Domenico, Santa Caterina da Siena, and St. Peter the martyr. In the chapel of the Coronation of our Lady, which is in the same part of the church, he likewise painted certain small historical pictures; and on the doors which close the old organ he painted an Annunciation on cloth, which is now in the convent, opposite to the door of the lower dormitory, and between the two cloisters.

Fra Giovanni was so greatly beloved for his admirable qualities by Cosimo de’ Medici, that the latter had no sooner completed the church and convent of San Marco, than he caused the good father to paint the whole story of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ on one of the walls of the chapterhouse. In this work are figures of all those saints who have been heads and founders of religious bodies, mourning and bewailing at the foot of the cross on one side, and on the other, St. Mark the Evangelist beside the mother of the Son of God, who has fainted at sight of the crucified Saviour, Around the Virgin are the Maries, who are sorrowing with