Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/63

Rh self to have derived in great part from the excellences of his ancestors, having received the principal chapel of the capitular-church as a gift from the canons, the founders of the building, and his fellow citizens generally, as has been related in the life of Pietro Laurati; and having restored the same in the manner already described, has caused a new sepulchre to be constructed in the centre of the choir, which is behind the altar, wherein he has deposited the remains of the above-named Lazzaro, and of Giorgio the elder, having removed them from the place where they previously lay, together with those of all the members of his family, male and female, and thus established a new burial place for all the descendants of the house of Vasari. The body of the present writer’s mother, who died at Florence in the year 1557, after having been deposited for some years in the church of Santa Croce, has in like manner been placed within this tomb, according to her own desire, with the remains of Antonio her husband, and the father of Giorgio, who died of the plague in the year 1527. In the predella, which is beneath the picture of the altar above -named, are portraits of Lazzaro, and the elder Giorgio his son, and grandfather of the author, taken from life by the present writer, with those of Antonio, father of the latter, and of Madonna Maddalena de’ Tacci his mother. And here shall end the life of the Aretine painter, Lazzaro Vasari.

When I consider within myself the various qualities of the benefits and advantages conferred on the art of painting by the different processes brought into operation by those numerous masters who have pursued the second manner, I