Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/291

Rh persons, in the work thus proposed to him, and which was to be executed at the cost of a lay brother belonging to the Molletti family, who when in the world had possessed a large patrimony. He had already made the design of his picture, wherein he had begun to depict numerous women and children, with a vast crowd and concourse of persons, when those monks declared that they would not have that story, but required the artist to paint for them simple, familiar, and well-defined figures. To do them pleasure therefore, he depicted a story from the life of San Domenico, who being in the refectory with his monks, and finding that they were without bread, made his prayer to God, when the table was instantly covered with bread brought by two angels in the form of men. In this work Giovan Antonio portrayed many of the monks who were then in the monastery from nature, and these figures appear to be truly alive; this is more especially the case with that of the lay brother of the Molletti family, who is represented as serving at table.

In the lunette which is over the table the master then depicted San Domenico at the foot of a crucifix, with Our Lady and San Giovanni Evangelista, who are weeping: on one side of the cross stands Santa Caterina of Siena, and on the other is Sant’ Antonino, archbishop of Florence, who was a brother of that order. This work is a fresco of considerable merit, and is painted with great care, but it would have been still more valuable had Sogliani been permitted to execute the subject which he had himself intended to portray, although it is nothing more than justice demands, on the other side, that he who expends his means for a work should be content with the same. Sogliani’s design for the proposed painting of the bread and fishes is now in the possession of Bartolommeo Gondi, who, to say nothing of a large picture which he has from the hand of Giovan Antonio, is likewise in possession of numerous drawings and heads painted on tinted paper from the life by this master, and which he received from the wife of Sogliani after the death of the latter, to whom Bartolommeo had been an intimate friend* We also have ourselves certain drawings by the hand of Giovan Antonio in our book, and these are exceedingly beautiful.