Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/347

Rh meanwhile, such extraordinary care, so much love, and such beautiful freshness does it display, that Francia Bigio may be truly affirmed to have worked in fresco better than any man of his time; no one of them understanding so well as himself that application of fixed tempera colours by which he secured harmony and softness to his paintings; wherefore he has well merited to be extolled and held in the highest estimation for this as well as for others of his works.

At Rovezzano, a place situate without the Florentine gate of the Santa Croce, Francia Bigio depicted a Tabernacle with Christ on the Cross and certain Saints; and in the church of San Giovannino, which is near the gate of San Piero Gattolino, he painted a Last Supper in fresco.

No long time after the completion of these works, the painter Andrea del Sarto departed from his native city and repaired to France; and he, having commenced the decoration of a cloister with stories from the life of San Giovanni Battista in chiaro-scuro, for the company of the Barefooted Brethren in Florence, these men, desiring to have the work completed, commissioned Francia Bigio, to the end that he, being an imitator of the manner of Andrea, might continue, in similar sort, what the latter had begun. Whereupon Francia Bigio, having first finished the decorations entirely around one side of the cloister, then completed two stories, wherein he displayed the utmost diligence. These are, first San Giovanni Battista requiring permission from his father Zacharias to depart into the desert; and next the meeting of St. John and Our Saviour Christ on the way, with Joseph and Mary, who stand beside observing them embrace each other. But Francia Bigio did not continue the work further, seeing that the return of Andrea del Sarto caused the