Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/120

112 by having a miserable frame-work of stucco, by which the altar-piece and the lunettes were surrounded, replaced by a rich and beautiful one carved in wood and gilded, when he commissioned Perino to paint the walls of the chapel. In the lunettes above-named, there were already four pictures in fresco, the subjects being taken from the life of Santa Maria Maddalena; the altar-piece, which was in oil, as we have said, represented our Saviour Christ appearing to Mary Magdalen in the garden, and under the form of the gardener. Perino now caused the scaffolding and enclosure to be prepared for his work; and that done, he set hand to the same, which, after several months of labour, he brought to its completion.

The pictures here executed were two, of no great size, and one on each wall; the divisions were formed by grottesche of the most fanciful beauty, partly in relief, partly painted; and the whole was surrounded by stucco-work of varied and graceful character. One of these pictures exhibits the Pool of Bethesda, with the sick and lame assembled around it, the angel who descends to move the waters, and a perspective view of the portico, the columns of which recede very finely into the distance. The attitudes and vestments of the priests also are singularly graceful, although the figures themselves are small, as I have said. The subject of the other picture is the resurrection of Lazarus after he has been dead four days, and in his re-awakening to life are still seen the paleness and the suffering of his death. Around the principal figure are others engaged in freeing him from the cerements of the tomb, with many more, all deeply moved with the event, but some appearing to be lost in astonishment at the miracle before them. There are besides certain small temples in the back ground, they are treated with infinite care and forethought, and as much may be said of all the works in stucco by which the paintings are surrounded.

Four small pictures, two on each wall, form the completion of the work, they are placed one on each side of the larger paintings, and the subject of the first is the Centurion imploring the Saviour to heal his son by the force of a word; the second exhibits Our Lord when he drives forth the traders from the temple: the Transfiguration of Christ occupies the third, and the fourth has a subject of similar character. Inside the chapel, and on the ressaults of the