Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/183

Rh of Buonarroti, was given to Daniello of Volterra, with orders that a grotto in stucco-work should be first erected, and the figure of Cleopatra then placed within it.

Daniello set hand to the preparations accordingly, but, although earnestly requested to hasten, his proceedings were so exceedingly dilatory that he did but complete the decorations in stucco and paintiRg, leaving many other things, which the Pope wished to have done, in a state of suspension for so long a time, that all interest in the undertaking departed from the mind of His Holiness, and the work was not finished at all, everything being suffered to remain as we now see it.

In the Church of Sant’ Agostino, Daniello painted a fresco of the size of life in one of the Chapels; a figure of St. Helena namely, who is causing the holy Cross to be restored to the light of day. He likewise added figures of St. Cecilia and St. Lucia in two niches of the side walls; but these figures were painted in part only by himself, having been principally executed after his designs by the young men who were with him; the work does therefore not display so high a degree of perfection as do some other of Daniello’s performances.

About the same time, a Chapel in the Church of the Trinità, which stands opposite to that of the Signora Elena Orsina, was entrusted to Daniello by the Signora Lucrezia della Rovere. Having first prepared certain compartments by means of stucco-work, Daniello then caused the Vaulting to be decorated with Stories from the Life of the Virgin, by Marco da Siena and Pelegrino da Bologna, while on one of the walls he commissioned the Spaniard Bizzera to depict a Nativity of the Madonna, and permitted his own disciple, Giovan Paolo Rosselli, of Volterra, to represent the Infant Christ presented to Simeon, on the other.

This last-named artist likewise painted Gabriello, the Angel of the Annunciation, and the Birth of Christ, in the uppermost range of Arches.

On the angles of the outer side, moreover, our artist placed two large figures, with two Prophets, beneath the Pilasters. The façade of the Altar Daniello painted with his own hand; here he depicted Our Lady ascending the steps of the Temple; and on the principal wall he also painted the Virgin, borne to heaven by numerous Angels, under the