Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/88

80 could do, and that in works which were all of a grand and magnificent character. Of this artist we find it related, that at the time when Antonio Pollaiuolo was in Rome, and much occupied with the monuments of bronze which he was constructing in St. Peter’s, there came to his house a youth of his kinsmen, called Simone, who had fled from Florence on account of certain quarrels. This young man, who had been placed with a master in wood-work, had a gre^at inclination to the study of architecture, and began to examine the beautiful antiquities of Rome, wherein he found a perpetual delight; he therefore employed himself with infinite assiduity in the admeasurement of the same. Continuing this occupation, he had been no long time in Rome before he began to give evidence of the progress he had made, not only in that study of the proportions, which we have just indicated, but also in the the proper methods of executing such works as might be proposed for erection.

Having proceeded thus far, Simone resolved to return to Florence. He left Rome accordingly, and when he arrived in his native place, having that facility of speech which goes far towards the making of an effective narrator, he would often describe the wonders of Rome, or such remarkable objects as he had seen in other places; but this he did with so much exactitude, that he was ever afterwards called Il Cronaca, or the Chronicler, and that because it did truly appear to all who heard his relations, as though he were himself a chronicle of events, so minute and accurate were his descriptions.

In course of time this artist rendered himself so good a master, that he was reputed to be the best among the modern architects of Florence; he showed a particular discernment in his choice of sites, and gave manifest proof also of a more elevated mind than was displayed by many of those who were attached to the same profession. The fact that he was