the Hospital. In this work there were much fewer figures than would seem to have been required for the due relation of the event, the space being partly occupied by a Tabernacle, within which was a figure of Our Lady; but this has been lately removed by Don Isidore Montaguto, the new Director of the Hospital, who desired to construct a grand entrance to the house at that place, and the remainder of the story has been added by Francesco Brini,[1] a young Florentine painter. In this admirable fresco Gherardo had produced a work which it would not be possible for the most practised master to equal, but with exceeding labour and great diligence. In the same hospital Gherardo painted the miniatures of numerous books for the church,[2] with some for Santa Maria del Fiore, and others for Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary. These last, on the death of that monarch, with others by the hand of Vante, and the rest of the masters who were working for the Hungarian king in Florence, were paid for and taken by the illustrious Lorenzo de’ Medici, who placed them among those so much celebrated which he was preparing for the library, afterwards erected by Pope Clement VII,[3] and which the duke Cosimo has now commanded to be published.[4]
Having thus, from a master in miniatures, become a painter, as we have said, Gherardo, in addition to the works already mentioned, prepared a large cartoon, with figures of great size, for those of the Evangelists, which he was to execute in mosaic, in the chapel of San Zanobi; but before the illustrious Lorenzo de’ Medici had caused him to obtain the commission for that chapel, Gherardo, to prove that he was well versed in the art of working in mosaic, and to show that he could proceed without any associate, had executed a head of San Zanobi, of the size of life, which is still preserved in Santa Maria del Fiore, and is placed on the altar
- ↑ This Francesco Brini is hut little known. An artist of the same name is enumerated among those of the seventeenth century. —Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
- ↑ Some of these are still preserved in the Archives of the Institution. Among them is a particularly rich missal.
- ↑ See D’Agincourt, (pi. Ixxix.) One of those executed for Matthias Corvinus, is now in the Library of the Vatican.
- ↑ To be thrown open to the public, that is to say,—Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
