few little things done by him in miniature, from which, although they may now seem rather crude than otherwise, we may yet perceive how greatly the art of design was improved by his labours.
ARNOLFO DI LAPO, ARCHITECT, OF FLORENCE.
[1232: 1310.]
Having spoken, in my Preface to these Lives, of certain edifices, old, but not antique,[1] of which I did not name the architects, because they were not known to me, I will now enumerate, in this introduction to the life of Arnolfo, some few other buildings, erected in his time or shortly before it, of which the authors are also unknown, and will afterwards speak of such as were built during his lifetime, and the architects of which are either known or can be ascertained from the mode of the building, and from different notices, writings, and inscriptions, left by them in the works they constructed. Nor will such discourse be out of place; for although these buildings are neither beautiful nor in a good style, but
- ↑ A distinction, which Vasari has made towards the end of his “Introduction to the Lives,” where he explains what he means by “old”, and what by “antique,” see ante, page 31.
belonged to the biographer of Arezzo (Vasari). Baldinucci further says, in his “Address to the Reader,” and in his letters to the Marquis Vincenzo Capponi, that he had himself advised Cardinal Leopoldo to arrange the large mass of drawings collected, in chronological order, and had even been entrusted with this labour by the Cardinal, and afterwards by Cosmo III ; but Giovanni Cinelli, in his bitter “Critica,” not only refuses the merit of proposing this arrangement to Baldinucci, but denies that he superintended it, and gives all the credit of that work to the Count Carlo Cesare Malvasia, of Bologna, who was assisted by the councils of Volterrano, of Lippi, and of the Cardinal himself. The greater part of the collection was sent to the Gallery of the Uffizj, in the year 1700, where the vast number of drawings would now make it difficult to distinguish those collected by Vasari. It is true, that this series, lately arranged anew, commences with “certain little things done in miniature’’ on parchment, which are attributed to Cimabue, and may be those here alluded to by Vasari. Many other drawings belonging to Vasari became the property of Crozat, who published a part of them.—Ed. Flor.
