Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/199

Rh scattering flowers, and these likewise give evidence of much thought and consideration, as well in their habiliments as in other respects, they are painted with so much softness that the flesh appears to be really living, and in all other respects they seem rather natural than merely feigned.

In the second picture, Andrea represented the three Magi from the East, who are led by the guiding star, and proceed to pay their adoration to the child Jesus. The master has represented them as having approached near to the place where he is to be found, and exhibits them as having, descended from their horses, an arrangement to which he was led by the fact that he had but so much space as included the width of two doors between his work and the Birth of Christ, which had been previously painted in that cloister by Alesso Baldovinetti. The kings are followed by their court, with carriages and baggage of various sorts, attended by numerous followers, three of whom are portraits taken from the life: the figures here alluded to wear the Florentine dress, they are depicted in one of the angles; the first is a full-length figure looking at the spectator, this is Jacopo Sansovino; the second, who is leaning on him and pointing forwards with one arm foreshortened, is Andrea himself, the master of the whole work; and the head, seen in profile behind Jacopo Sansovino, is that of the musician Ajolle.

In this picture there are boys climbing on the walls, the better to obtain a view of the magnificent show, and of the strange animals which form part of the train,, they are admirably painted, and in a word the whole story is equal in merit to that previously described; the master surpassed himself, indeed, to say nothing of Franciabigio, in them both; the latter also completing his work, to which we have alluded above.