Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/150

142 which are supported by angels: beneath are several Saints, male and female, tolerably well executed, but still not displaying the excellence manifest in the pictures above-mentioned. But Domenico, excusing himself for this with many of his friends, and more particularly on a certain occasion with Giorgio Vasari, declared that, removed from the air of Siena, and deprived of his accustomed enjoyments and conveniences, he no longer appeared to himself to be capable of producing anything. He returned home, therefore, resolving that he would never again quit his native city for the purpose of working in any other place.

For the nuns of St. Paul, whose convent is situate near the church of San Marco, in Siena, Domenico then painted a picture in oil; the subject of which is the Birth of Our Lady. Sant’ Anna is seen in a bed which is foreshortened, the nurses are moving around it, and within the shadow of an open door is a woman engaged in drying linen; this figure has no other light than that presented to her by the fire. On the Predella, which is admirably painted, are three pictures in tempera, the Virgin presented in the Temple namely, the Marriage of our Lady, and the Adoration of the Magi. In the Mercanzia, which is a court or tribune of the merchants, in the same city, the officials have a small picture, which is singularly beautiful, this is said to have been painted by Domenico in his early youth, it represents the half-length figure of St. Paul, in a seated position, and on each side are historical pictures, one presenting the Conversion of the Saint, and the other his Decapitation; the figures of both being very small.

Finally, Domenico received a commission to paint the great Tribune or Apsis of the cathedral of Siena, which is at the head of the fabric and behind the high altar. Here he first prepared all the ornaments in stucco-work with his own hand, executing foliage and various forms of great beauty and richness, with two figures, each representing the goddess of Victory, at the extremities of the semicircle; a truly admir-