Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/61

Rh performed by Parri Spinelli. He resolved, therefore, seeing that he so well knew how to prepare, to burn, to conjoin, and to mount the glass, to produce some work which should also be meritorious in respect of the painting, and therefore applied to Lazzaro for two cartoons of his invention, wherewith he proposed to make two windows for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Having obtained what he wished from Lazzaro, who was his friend and a very obliging person, Fabiano completed the windows, which are so beautiful and well done that there are few masters who Vfould have the right to be ashamed of owning them. In one of these is a figure of Our Lady very finely executed; and in the other, which is even better by very much than the first, is the Resurrection of Christ. Before the tomb there lies the figure of an armed man foreshortened; the window, and consequently the picture, is very small, insomuch that it is a wonder how he has contrived to make the figures look so large as they do in that narrow space. I could say many other things of Lazzaro Vasari, who was an exceedingly good designer, as may be seen by the drawings in our book, but I remain silent respecting them, because I think it better So to do.

Lazzaro Vasari was a person of pleasing manners, and very facetious in conversation; but although much addicted to the pleasures of life, he was nevertheless careful to keep always within the path of right. He lived to the age of seventy-two, and left a son named Giorgio, who occupied himself continually with the old Aretine vases of terra-cotta, and at the time when Messer Gentile of Urbino, bishop of Arezzo, was dwelling in that city, this Giorgio discovered again the lost process of colouring vases in terra-cotta, red and black, which method had been practised by the ancient inhabitants of Arezzo from the time of King Porsenna. Being a person of much enterprize and industry, Giorgio made large vases by means of the potter’s wheel, some being a braccio and a half high, specimens of which may still be