help so efficient, the picture was finished in such sort, during the year 1450,[1] that I consider it to be the best work, whether for design or colouring, that Lorenzo ever produced.
No long time after its completion, Lorenzo being old and exhausted, died at the age of sixty years, or thereabout. He left two sons, who both pursued the study of painting. The one, whose name was Bicci,[2] assisted him in many of his labours;[3] the other, who was called Neri, painted the portraits of his father[4] and himself, in the chapel of the Lenzi family, in the church of Ognissanti, on two medallions, with letters around them, which give the name of both. And this artist, painting certain stories from the life of Our Lady, in the before-mentioned chapel of the Lenzi, took great pains to imitate the different vestments worn at that period, those of men, as well as of women. He likewise painted the picture, in distemper, for the altar of the chapel.[5] In the abbey
- ↑ According to Manni. See his notes to Baldinucci. Lorenzo died in 1427. Other commentators are of opinion that his death should be placed even later than the date given by Vasari. Baldinucci leaves the question undecided, and Lanzi follows Vasari.
- ↑ This artist is registered in the ancient book of the Company of Painters, date 1424. Baldinucci cites the funeral registers of the Carmelites, to show that he died on the 6th of May 1452, and was buried in the church of the Carmine, where the family of Bicci had its sepulchre. —Schorn, and the Ed. Flor. of 1849.
- ↑ Vasari was not able to cite any painting executed wholly by Bicci di Lorenzo, and we owe the discovery of a work, by this master, to the researches of Signor Galgano Gargani Garganetti. The picture represents SS. Cosimo and Damiano, and, until the year 1842, was appended to a pilaster of thePlorentine Cathedral. It is now in the first corridor of the Gallery of the Uffizj. It was painted for Antonio Ghezzi della Casa, to whom, as appears by a resolution of the 22nd of June 1430, the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore granted permission for its being suspended on one of the pilasters of that church. Annexed, was the condition that Ghezzi should be understood to have acquired no right of property, or any other right in the said church, by such concession, but that “the wardens aforesaid should have power to remove the said picture from that place at their pleasure, and without the consent of the said Anthony.” “Operarii ad eorum beneplacitum ipsam (tabulam) de dicto loco removeri possint, sine consensu dicti Antonii.”—Ibid, of 1846-9.
- ↑ The Florentine Editors of 1846 accuse Vasari and Baldinucci of error, as regards the genealogy of the Bicci family. They cite documents, which prove that Neri, whom Vasari calls the son of Lorenzo, was the son of Bicci, the first-named son of Lorenzo, and, consequently, the grandson of the latter artist.
- ↑ The fresco paintings have perished long since. The fate of the picture in distemper is not known.—Ed. Flor. 1832 -8.
