Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/475

Rh to have abstracted the food out of hatred to those robbed, and who obtained all the credit of the contrivance. One morning the truth was made known and the mystery explained, whereupon the monks, to be rid of their tormentors, agreed to double the rations of Mariotto and his scholars, provided only that they would promise to finish the work speedily, which was accordingly effected with great merriment and many a joyous laugh.

For the nuns of San Giuliano in Florence, Mariotto painted the picture of the High Altar. This work he executed at a room which he had in the Gualfonda, together with another for the same church, in which he represented the Trinity, a Crucifix that is to say, surrounded by angels, with the figure of God the Father, painted in oil on a gold ground.

Mariotto was a man of restless character, a lover of the table, and addicted to the pleasures of life, it thus happened that the laborious minutiee and racking of brain attendant on the study and exercise of art, became insufferable to him. He had frequently been not a little mortified also, by the tongues of his brother artists, who tormented him, as their custom is and always has been, the habit descending from one to another by inheritance, and being maintained in perpetual activity. He determined therefore, to adopt a calling, which if less elevated, would be also less fatiguing and much more cheerful: our artist accordingly opened a very handsome hotel, the house being one of those outside the Gate of San Gallo; but not content with this he likewise established a tavern and eating-house, at the Drago, near the Ponte Vecchio. In these places he performed the duties of host during several months, affirming that he had chosen a profession wherein there was no embarrassment with perspective, foreshortenings, or muscles, and what was still more, no criticism or censure to dread; whereas that which he had