Messer Guccio di Gino, most honourable cavaliers, to the Duke of Anjou.
Lorenzo was afterwards invited to Arezzo by Don Laurentino, abbot of San Bernardo, a monastery of the order of Monte Oliveto, where he painted stories in fresco from the life of San Bernardo, in the principal chapel, for Messer Carlo Marsupini:[1] but being then about to paint the life of San Benedetto in the cloister of the convent (after, I should observe, that he had completed the principal chapel of San Francesco, which he decorated for the elder Francesco de’ Bacci, and where he executed the cieling and half of the arch entirely alone), Lorenzo was attacked by a complaint of the chest; hereupon he caused himself to be removed to Florence, leaving Marco da Montepulciano to paint those stories in the aforesaid cloister of San Benedetto according to the designs which he had made, and which he left with Don Laurentino. This, Marco did accordingly, as well as he was able, and finished them on the 24th of April, in the year 1438, executing the whole in “chiaroscuro”, as may be seen written thereon by his own hand, in words and verses no less stupid and ungraceful than was the picture,[2] Lorenzo having thus returned to his native city, was no sooner restored to health than he recommenced his labours, and on the same fagade of the convent of Santa Croce whereon he had previously depicted the St. Christopher, he now painted the Assumption of the Virgin into Heaven, where she is surrounded by a choir of angels; beneath is St.Thomas, receiving the girdle.[3] In the execution of this work, Lorenzo, who was still ailing, obtained the assistance of Donatello,[4] then a youth; and, by
- ↑ The learned and celebrated secretary of the Florentine Republic, and an ornament to his native city. He died in 1453.— Ed. Flor. 1832.
- ↑ The works left by this master, in Arezzo, still remain, as do most of those executed by Marco da Montepulciano.
- ↑ This picture is lost.
- ↑ Donatello was certainly not a youth at this time. The Roman and Florentine commentators cite documents to prove that he was invited to execute the statue of St. John the Baptist in 1423, for the people of Orvieto: “Scientes virum virtuosum M. Donatum de Florentia intagliatorem figurarum, Magistrum lapidum, atque intagliatorem figurarum inligno, et eximium Magistrum omnium trajectorum,” etc. (See Storia del Duomo d’Orvieto, p, 299, doc. 64. —Note to Schorn’s German Translation of Vasari, and Ed. Flor. 1846.) The latest writers on this question say that he was old when this picture was executed, being born in 1386. The work in which he is here said to have assisted Lorenzo, is lost.
