Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/290

282 ture Vasari also painted a Madonna, with the Saviour in her arms, as the Superintendent desired; the Virgin is accompanied by San Jacopo Interciso, San Matteo, the Pontiff, San Silvestro, and San Turpe the Knight. But to the end that he might not repeat the circumstances of the previously painted pictures (although he had greatly varied his work from those of others, and that in many respects), having thus to depict another Madonna, Vasari represented her with the Saviour dead in her arms, and with the Saints around her, as in a Deposition from the Cross; the two Thieves, entirely nude, are fixed on crosses formed of unhewn trunks, raised on the height; around are horses and the executioners, with Joseph, Nicodemus, and the Maries, which Vasari did to satisfy the superintendent, who was determined to have all the Saints whose efiigies had been found among the old dismantled chapels, reinstated among the paintings of the new building, by way of restoring their memory.

One picture was still wanting, and this was painted by 11 Bronzino, who represented a nude figure of Christ with eight Saints therein, and thus were these chapels brought to a conclusion, all which Giovan Antonio might have adorned with his own hands if he had not been so dilatory.

This master had obtained great favour with the Pisans, and after the death of Andrea del Sarto he was commissioned to complete a picture which Andrea had left but j ust sketched for the Brotherhood of San Francesco; this is now in the house of that brotherhood on the Piazza di San Francesco in Pisa: he also executed a series of designs for hangings to be used in the hall of the Wardens of Works to the Cathedral; wdth many others of similar kind in Florence, this being an occupation in which Giovan Antonio found much pleasure, and these he did for the most part in company with the Florentine painter, Tommaso di Stefano, who was his friend.

Being summoned by the monks of San Marco in Florence to paint a fresco at the upper end of their refectory, Sogliani desired to depict the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes, wherewith our Saviour Christ gave food to five thousand