Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/484

476 but where the fluid had passed near the frame, the gold was totally destroyed and nothing was left remaining on the wood, but the ground of bole. I have thought this a fitting occasion to say thus much respecting oil painting, to the end that all may see how important it is that works of art should be secured so far as may be, against such accidents, which have happened not in this place only but in many others.

At the corner of a house situated between the Ponte Carraja and the Cuculia, and now in the possession of Matteo Botti, Raff* * * §aellino painted a small Tabernacle in fresco, the subject selected being the Yirgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms: on one side of Our Lady is Santa Caterina, on the other Santa Barbara, both kneeling, the whole work an exceedingly graceful one and very carefully executed. For the Villa Marignolle, which belongs to the Girolamo family, this master painted two very fine pictures representing the Madonna with San Zanobi, and other Saints: the predellas also are decorated with historical scenes (the figures very small), setting forth events from the lives of the abovementioned saints, and all executed with the utmost care. On the wall above the door of the church, which belongs to the nuns of San Giorgio, Bafiaellino painted a Pieta, with the Maries grouped around the Virgin; and in an arch beneath he painted another Madonna, a work entirely worthy of praise, which he completed in the year 1504. In the church of Santo Spirito in Florence, Eaffaellino painted a picture, over that which Filippo his master had executed for the Nerli family; the subject is a Pieta, and the work is held to be a good and praiseworthy performance, but in another, representing San Bernardo, he has not.