Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/18

6 mission for a picture to be painted for the Monastery of Costello, made great efforts to surpass his rivals, and executed that work, the subject of which was the Nativity of Christ, with all the pains and care that he could possibly command; the principal figures are the Madonna, who is in the act of adoring the Divine Child, with San Giuseppo, and two other saints, San Francesco and San Geronimo namely, both kneeling. He added a most beautiful landscape, of a country similar to the Sasso della Vernia, where it was that San Francesco received the stigmata: over the hut wherein is the Infant Saviour, moreover, there are angels singing; the colouring of this work is exceedingly beautiful, and it has great relief.

About the same time Fidolfo executed a picture which was sent to Pistoja, and commenced two others for the Company or Brotherhood of San Zanobi, who have their seat near the Canonicate of Santa Maria del Fiore; these pictures being intended to stand one on each side of the Annunciation, which had formerly been executed in that place by Mariotto Albertinelli, as we have related in his life. These works Fidolfo brought to conclusion in a manner which was greatly to the satisfaction of the Brotherhood, representing in one of the two, San Zanobi restoring to life a child which had died in the Borgo degli Albizzi, at Florence; this story is depicted with much power and animation, an effect which is heightened by the circumstance that many of the heads are portraits from the life, to say nothing of certain women, whose faces express most truthfully the joy and surprise with which they behold the child revive, and see his spirit return to him.

The second of the pictures painted for the Brotherhood of San Zanobi represents that saint when carried by six bishops from San Lorenzo, where he was first buried, to Santa Maria del Fiore, and when, passing by the Piazza of San Giovanni, an Elm, which had been dried up and dead, being touched by the coffin wherein was the holy corpse, put forth leaves, for such was the will of God, and bore flowers anew. On the place where the tree stood there is now a