event. I refrain from minute description of the crowd of horses, the attendants casting lots on the vestments of Christ, the resurrection of the holy fathers, and all the other valued accessories, which resemble those of the best modern artists rather than such as are commonly found among the painters of Simon’s day.[1] He occupied the entire extent of the wall with his picture, and disposed the different events of his composition, with admirable judgment, on the declivity of a mountain, not dividing the several periods of his story by ornaments placed between each, as the other old masters did, and indeed as many moderns do, insomuch that the earth stands on the air four or five times in a picture, examples of which may be seen in the principal chapel of this same church of Santa Maria Novella, or in the Campo Santo of Pisa, where Simon himself, executing many works in fresco, was compelled against his judgment to make such divisions, since they had been made by the other masters who had laboured in that place, as for example by Giotto and Buonamico his master,[2] who had commenced their stories with this ill-considered method of arrangement. Less in error then, than those by whose example he was misled, Simon adhered to their practice in the Campo Santo, where he painted a Virgin in fresco within the building and over the principal door; she is borne to heaven by a choir of angels, who sound their instruments and sing with so much animation, that all the various gestures proper to musicians playing and singing are to be seen in these figures; some bend the ear to the sound, others open their mouths in divers forms, raise their eyes to heaven, inflate their throats, puff out their cheeks, exhibit, in short, all the movements usual among musicians.[3] Beneath this Assumption, Simon painted stories from the life of St. Banieri of Pisa, in three pictures. The first represents the
- ↑ One of the many passages that might be quoted, in reply to the accusation of injustice, and undue severity, against all who were not of his own city, etc., so frequently brought against Vasari.
- ↑ If Vasari here means to call Buonamico the master of Giotto, or of Simon, he was wrong in either case. The phrase is most probably an inadvertence. —Ed. Flor. May not Vasari, who is not always rigidly precise in the arrangement of his words, here mean to say, “ Giotto his master, and Buonamico”?
- ↑ This picture is still in existence, but has, unhappily, been somewhat changed by restorations.
