Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/19

Rh column of marble with a cross upon it, as a memorial of that miracle. This picture w^as no less beautiful than were those before described as produced by the abovenamed Ridolfo.

Now these works were all performed by our artist during the lifetime of his uncle David, wherefore that good old man was much rejoiced thereby, and thanked God that he had lived so long as almost to have seen the genius of Domenico living again in Ridolfo. At length, and when, in his seventy-fourth year that is, he was preparing, though then so old, to visit Rome, there to take part in the Holy Jubilee of 1525, he fell sick and died in that same year, lie received sepulture from Ridolfo in the Church of Santa Maria Novella, where the other members of the Ghirlandajo family are buried.

Ridolfo had a brother in the Camaldoline Monastery of the Angeli in Florence; and this ecclesiastic, who was called Don Bartolommeo, was a truly upright and worthy man. Ridolfo, who greatly loved him, painted a picture for him in the cloister which looks on the garden; in the Loggia that is to say, wherein are these stories from the life of San Benedetto, which were painted in Verdaccio by the hand of Paolo Uccello. The subject of Ridolfo’s story, which is on the right of the entrance as you go in by the door of the garden, is the abovenamed Saint seated at table with two Angels beside him; he is waiting until Romano shall send him bread into the grotto, but the devil has cut the cord to pieces with stones. San Benedetto is furthermore depicted as investing a young brother of his order with the monastic habit. But the best of all the figures in that arch of the Loggia is the portrait of a dwarf who was at that time wont to stand at the door of the monastery.

At the same place, and over the Holy Water vase which stands near the entrance of the Church, Ridolfo painted a fresco in colours, Our Lady namely, with the Divine Child in her arms, and little Angels, which are most beautiful, hovering around her; over the door of a small chapel, which is in the cloister opposite to the Capitular buildings also, he painted a fresco in one of the lunettes, San Rornualdo that