Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/106

98 ing, and is executed with infinite care. In the Church of the Cestello, this master painted Angels in fresco around the tabernacle of the Sacrament, and in a picture painted for a chapel of the same Church, he depicted the Madonna with the Divine Child in her arms. Our Lady is also accompanied by San Giovanni Battista, San Bernardo, and other Saints. Having completed this picture, the monks of that monastery being of opinion that he had acquitted himself exceedingly well in those works, commissioned him to paint certain pictures in a cloister of their abbey of Settimo, situate at a short distance from the gates of Florence, the subject of these being the Visions of Count ITgo, who built seven abbeys.

No long time after this, Domenico Puligo painted a tabernacle, which is at the corner of the Via Mozza da Santa Caterina, wherein he depicted Our Lady standing upright, with the Divine Child in her arms; the latter is in the act of espousing Santa Caterina; there is also a figure of San Piero the martyr. In the Castello d’ Anghiari, Domenico painted a Deposition from the Cross for a certain Brotherhood, and this picture may be justly enumerated among,his best works. He made it his principal profession to paint pictures of Our Lady, portraits and other heads rather than larger works, insomuch that he spent almost all his time in such things. Now if this artist had given more of his attention to the labours of art, and less of it to the pleasures of the world, he would without doubt have made very extraordinary progress in painting, and the rather as he had Andrea del Sarto for his most intimate friend, and was in many things assisted by the advice and even the designs of that master; wherefore many of Domenico’s works are seen to be well designed, as well as coloured in a good and beautiful manner.

But Domenico Puligo was not willing to subject himself to