Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/127

Rh the Rotundo at Rome, which had served as his model. Here, as he observed, the ribs that descend from the circular opening in the centre, which gives light to the building, form the compartments, which are divided transversely into those deepened recesses that secure the rosettes, and which diminish by regular degrees from the base to the summit, as do the ribs also, wherefore the latter do not fall precisely on the centres of the columns. He added, that if he who had erected that Temple of the Rotundo, which is the most admirable and most carefully considered edifice known, and is constructed with the most exact proportions, paid no regard to that circumstance in a vaulting of so much greater size and so superior in importance, still less was he required to consider it, in the compartments of a space so much smaller. Be this as it may, many artists, among whom is Michelagnolo, are of opinion, that the Rotundo was erected by three different arehitects, the first of whom raised the building to the completion of the cornice which is above the columns; the second they consider to have carried it from the cornice upwards, that part namely, wherein are windows of a more delicate manner; and this portion is certainly very different from that beneath, the vaulting having been then continued without any regard whatever to the relation required between its eompartments and the divisions of the lower part. The third master is believed to have executed that portico which is held to be so exquisite a work. He, therefore, who should now permit himself to fall into the error of Andrea, could scarcely offer the same excuse.

Having completed this work, our architect received a commission from the Corbinelli family, for the construction of the Chapel of the Sacrament, in the Church of the Santo Spirito, a task which he completed with infinite care, imitating Donato and other excellent masters, in the bassirilievi, and sparing no labour or pains in his desire to do himself honour, wherein he succeeded aecordingly. In two niches, which are one on each side of a very beautiful tabernacle, he placed figures of two Saints, somewhat more than a braccia in height, these are San Jacopo and San Matteo, and they are executed with so much animation, and in so good a manner, that the observer perceives every kind of