before him on a Cross, and is striking his breast, while he drives far from him those mundane thoughts whi(m did not cease to assail him, even in the most remote deserts, as he most fully tells us in his own writings. To express this condition of things intelligibly, I depicted Venus, with Cupid in her arms, and leading a laughing Love by the hand; she is flying from the place made sacred by that devotion, and has suffered the quiver and arrows of her son to fall to the earth. The arrows which Cupid has shot at the Saint turn broken towards himself, while others, caught as they are falling, are brought back to Venus by her Doves.[1]
These pictures were, without doubt, accomplished to the best of mine ability, and at the time they may perchance have pleased me, yet I do not know that they would do so at my present age. But as art is difficult in itself, we must be content to accept from each that whereof he is capable. This, however, I may say, and can affirm it with truth, that all my pictures, inventions, and designs, of whatever sort, have always been executed, I do not say with very great promptitude only, but with more than ordinary facility, and without laboured effort.[2] A proof of this will be found, as I have related elsewhere, in the large picture, painted by me in six days only, at San Giovanni in Florence, in the year 1542, for the baptism of the Signore Don Francesco Medici, now Prince of Florence and Siena.
After the completion of these works, I would fain have gone to Rome, in compliance with the wishes of Messer Bindo Altoviti, but I could not bring my purpose to bear, having been instantly pressed by the Aretine Poet, Messer Pietro, then in much renown and my intimate friend, to
- ↑ Now in the Royal Gallery of the Pitti.
- ↑ For this rapidity of execution, which doubtless did wrong to his talents, Vasari has been reproached rather than extolled by later times, and with justice, up to a certain point, since it is certain that we do not now ask how long a time the master gave to his work, but how that work was accomplished. We are nevertheless to remember that if our admirable author prided himself in the promptitude of his execution, that came from the uprightness of character, which, causing him most justly to revolt from the unprincipled conduct of certain among his contemporaries w'ho unreasonably deferred, or, on too many occasions, even neglected altogether, to fulfil engagements for which they had received payment, may have caused him, in the pride of rectitude, and the recollection of his own fidelity to his engagements, somewhat to over-estimate the quality on question.
