Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/178

166 with one hand they hold the Capital, and with the other they appear to be placing the shaft which supports it, and which, half-resting on the base, is already attached to the capital; the whole work is performed with incredible care and pains. In the arch above the picture, Daniello painted two Sybils in fresco, and these are the best figures of the whole; they stand, one on each side of the window, which rises above the centre of the picture, and gives light to the chapel. The ceiling of the chapel is divided into four compartments by fanciful, beautiful, and richly varied designs in stucco and grottesche, to which are added very new and original masks and festoons: within these compartments arefour stories of the Cross and of St. Helena, the Mother of Constantine. The first of these represents the fabrication of the three Crosses, which took place before the Passion of our Lord; in the second is St. Helena commanding certain Hebrews to show her these Crosses; in the third she is giving orders to the effect that those who, having knowledge of the same, have refused to impart it to her, shall be cast into a well; and in the fourth are seen the Hebrews pointing out to her the place wherein all the three Crosses were buried. These four Stories are beautiful to an extraordinary degree, and are executed with remarkable care.

On the side-walls of the chapel are four other stories— two on either side that is to say—each being divided into two parts by the cornice which forms the impost of the arch, on which reposes the vaulting of the said chapel. In one of these stories is St. Helena, who is causing the Holy Cross, with the other two Crosses, to be drawn from a well; in the second is the Cross of the Saviour distinguished by its cure of a sick person. The pictures which are beneath exhibit, one, the above-named St. Helena, who recognizes the Cross of Christ by its resuscitation of a dead man; and the other, which is opposite to it, the Emperor Heraclius, walking barefoot and divested of his imperial robes, as he bears the Cross of the Redeemer through the gate of Rome. Here are seen large numbers of women and children, with men also kneeling in adoration of the Cross: many Barons