Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/563

Rh modern, triumphal processions, and many more, the mere sketches, designs, and cartoons for which, to say nothing of all else, is a matter demanding a very long time.

The nude figures, moreover, in the perfection whereof consists the beauty and excellence of our arts, with the landscapes, wherein those figures are exhibited, all of which I had to depict from Nature herself in the place to be displayed, were of themselves a laborious work; as were the many portraits, which I also took from the life, of generals, captains, and other military chiefs, whose figures, with those of their soldiers, appeared in the stories to be described. At a word, I may with truth affirm, that in this work I was called on to depict almost every thing that could present itself to the mind and thought of man, an almost infinite variety of persons, faces, vestments, and ornaments, with arms of all kinds, morions, helmets, and cuirasses, horses with their caparisons and defences, artillery of all sorts, and every other implement demanded for battles on land; to which must be added ships, and whatever belongs to those on the sea, or to the navigation of the ocean, with tempests and storms, rains, snows, and other matters, of which I cannot record even the names.

But whoever examines the work will easily comprehend the vast amount of labour, and the many weary vigils and nights of wakefulness that I have supported in the execution thereof, and in combining, with all the knowledge I could command, some forty large stories, each ten braccia square, and comprising very large figures of every kind. And if some of my disciples and dependants were there assisting me, it is also true that they sometimes gave me effectual aid, and sometimes the contrary, seeing that, as they well know, I have not unfrequently had to repaint all they had done with my own hand, and to go over the whole picture, that every part of it might be in the same manner.

These stories treat of the History of Florence, from its first foundation to the present day; dividing the town into its Quarters; they also describe the cities which have submitted to, or been subjugated by, Florence and the enemies she has overcome, with the war of Pisa (to speak more particularly) on one side, and that with Siena on the other. There is also a war carried on by the popular government, for the period of fourteen years; with another, which was