Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/396

388 of helmets, cuisses, shields, quivers, and many other pieces of armour: he furthermore added masks, marine animals, and other graceful fantasies, all so accurately figured and carved in such perfect relief, that they look like silver.

The frieze, which is between the architrave and the cornice in this work, was moreover adorned by Mosca with an exquisite ornament of foliage carved into full relief, and entirely detached from the ground of macigno; this he covered with birds which are so admirably executed that they seem to be flying in the air: it is indeed a marvellous thing to see the tiny legs of those minute creatures, none larger than life, all entirely detached from the stone in a manner that might well be thought impossible: the whole work indeed is more like a miracle than mere art. Simone, furthermore, added a festoon of fruit and foliage so perfectly rounded and detached from the stone, every part being finished with the most subtle delicacy, that these fruits do in a certain sense surpass the productions of nature. As the completion of the work, there were certain large masks and chandeliers, which are also truly beautiful, and although Simone was by no means called on to give so much labour to a work of that kind and for which he was to be but very frugally paid by that family, which had not great possessions, yet, incited by the love which he bore to art, and by the pleasure that one finds in doing a thing well, he chose to treat it in the manner we have said. With respect to the lavatory executed for the same house, he did not proceed in like manner, and although he made it sufficiently handsome it was yet but a work of the ordinary kind.

At this time Simone was also most useful in other matters to Piero di Subisso, who did not know very much, and whom Simone assisted in preparing designs for his various fabrics; plans for houses that is to say, with drawings for doors, windows, or other things appertaining to the vocation of the architect. At the corner of the Albergotti for example, and beneath the School and College of the Commune, there is a very fair window, constructed after the design of Simone Mosca,* and in the Pelliceria there are two windows by the same artist, both in the house of Ser Bernardino Serragli.