Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/356

348 it is not difficult to make additions to, and improvements in a thing once discovered.

The painting of arabesque decorations was preserved in Florence after the death of Morto, by Andrea Feltrini, called (U Cosimo, from his having been a disciple of Cosimo Eosselli in the study of figures, as he was afterwards of Morto da Feltro for that of arabesques, as we have before remarked. This artist also had received from nature the gift of a singular power of invention and much grace in that branch of art, insomuch that the decorations executed by him have increased grandeur, richness, and variety. He has besides imparted to them a manner differing from that of the antique, with more regularity in the arrangement, adding figures also which had never been seen in Rome, nor are they to be found in any other place, Florence only excepted, v/here Andrea di Cosimo has executed a large number. He has indeed never been surpassed in excellence, as regards this part of our vocation, by any master whatever; of this we have an example in the painted ornaments of the Predella, Avhich Andrea decorated in small coloured arabesques around the Pi eta previously executed by Pietro Perugino for the altar of the Serristori family; in this work the ground is of black and red mingled, and on this are grottesche in various colours, all executed with a singular boldness, facility, and grace.

It was by Andrea di Cosimo that the practice of covering the fronts of houses and palaces with an intonaco of plaster, wherein the black of ground charcoal or burnt straw had been mixed, was commenced, and which intonaco while in its fresh state, he next covered with white, then, having made such divisions of his work as he desired, he made perforated cartoons of the arabesques or grottesche to be executed therein, and having taken the impressions of these cartoons on the intonaco thus prepared, he then hatched the outline so obtained, with a graving iron, in such a manner that the entire façade was traced over by that instrument, the white being then removed from the grounds of the arabesques so that the dark colour alone remained, he then went over the whole work with a black or darkly tinted water colour, in a