Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/374

362 falque, the Church was hung with haize and serge, not around the central columns only, as is customary, but about all the surrounding Chapels also; nor was there any space between the pilasters, which stand on each side of those Chapels and correspond with the Columns, which had not some ornament of painting, or which did not present a beautiful and imposing aspect.

To begin with one end, in the space of the first Chapel, which is beside the High Altar, and proceeding towards the old Sacristy, there was a picture six braccia high and eight long, wherein, with a new and almost poetical invention, Michelagnolo was displayed as having attained the Elysian fields. On his right hand were figures larger than life, representing the most renowned of the great painters and sculptors of antiquity, each made clearly manifest by some particular sign; Praxiteles, by the Satyr which is in the Vigna of Pope Julius III.; Apelles, by the portrait of Alexander the Great; Zeuxis, by that picture with the grapes which deceived the birds; and Parrhasius with the pretended curtain covering the picture. The others, also, were in like manner made known by other signs.

On the left of Michelagnolo were the masters of modern times, all those who have been most illustrious in these arts, from Cimabue downward that is to say. Thus Giotto was known by a small portrait of Dante as a youth, depicted in the same manner as that by his hand which is still to be seen in the Church of Santa Croce. Masaccio was a portrait from the life; as was also Donatello, who had besides his Zuccone of the Campanile beside him. Pilippo Brunelleschi was made known by the copy of his Cupola of Santa Maria del Piore; then followed (portraits from the life and without any other sign) Pra Filippo, Taddeo Gaddi, Paolo Uccello, Fra Giovann’ Agnolo, Jacopo Pontormo, Francesco Salviati, and others; all surrounding Michelagnolo with a welcome similar to that offered by the masters of antiquity, and giving evidence in their looks of their love and admiration for him, no other than was done for Yirgil when the other poets received him on his return, as feigned by the divine poet Dante, from whom the invention was taken, as was likewise the verse which was added and which was exhibited on a scroll held in the hand of the River-