Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/90

82 vour. This variety of expression is certainly very fine, and is well calculated to teach students of art the value of imitative power, and the importance of being able to express clearly the affections and emo tions of the characters represented. Fra Filippo devoted the most earnest attention to this point, as is seen in this work; he has given the disciples who are burying St. Stephen attitudes so full of dejection, and faces so deeply afflicted, so drowned in tears, that it is scarcely possible to look at them without feeling a sense of sorrow. On the other side of the chapel is the History of St. John the Baptist, his Birth, that is to say, his Preaching in the Wilderness, his Baptism, the Feast of Herod, and the Decapitation of the Saint. In the picture of the Preaching, the Divine Spirit inspiring the speaker is most clearly manifest in his face, while the different emotions of hope, anxiety, gladness, and sorrow, of the crowd, women as well as men, who are listening around him, charmed and mastered by the force of his words, are equally well expressed. In the Baptism are beauty and goodness exemplified, and in the Feast of Herod, the splendour of the banquet, the address of Herodias, the astonishment of the guests, and their inexpressible sorrow when the head is presented on the charger, are rendered with admirable truth and effect. Among those present at the banquet are numerous figures in fine attitudes, exhibiting beautiful draperies and exquisite expressions of countenance. A portrait of Fra Filippo himself, taken with his own hand by help of a mirror, is one of them, and among the persons who bewail the death of St. Stephen, is the portrait of his disciple Fra Diamante, in a figure robed in black, and bearing the vestments of a bishop. This work is indeed the best of all that he produced, as well for the many fine qualities displayed in it, as for the circumstance, that having made the figures somewhat larger than life, he encouraged those who came after him to enlarge their manner. Fra Filippo was indeed so highly estimated for his great gifts, that many circumstances in his life which were very blameable received pardon, and were partly placed out of view, in consideration of his extraordinary abilities. In the work just described is the portrait of Messer Carlo, natural son of Cosimo de’ Medici, who was rector of the church wherein it was executed, which