well, as appears by some sheets by his hand which
are in our book, which are very carefully executed.

Giovanni da Ponte, Painter of Florence.

Although the old proverb that a bon vivant never lacks means is
untrue and unworthy of confidence, the contrary being the case, since
a man who does not live within his means comes at last to live in
want, and dies in misery; yet it sometimes happens that Fortune
rather assists those who throw away without reserve than those who
are orderly and careful in all things. When the favour of Fortune is
wanting, Death frequently repairs the defect and remedies the
consequences of men's thoughtlessness, for it comes at the very
moment when they would begin to realise, with sorrow, how wretched a
thing it is to have squandered everything when young to pass one's
age on shortened means in poverty and toil. This would have been the
fate of Giovanni da S. Stefano a Ponte of Florence, if, after he had
devoured his patrimony as well as the gains which came into his hand,
rather through good fortune than by his desserts, and some legacies
which came to him from unexpected quarters, he had not reached the
end of his life at the very time when he had exhausted his means. He
was a pupil of Buonamico Buffalmacco, and imitated his master more in
following worldly pleasures than in endeavouring to make himself a
skilful painter. He was born in the year 1307, and was Buffalmacco's
pupil in his youth. He executed his first works in fresco in the
Pieve of Empoli in the chapel of St Laurence, painting many scenes
from the life of that saint with such care, that so good a beginning
was considered to promise much better things in the future.
Accordingly he was invited in the year 1344 to Arezzo, where he did
an Assumption in a chapel in S. Francesco. Being in some credit in
that city, for lack of other artists, he next painted in the Pieve
the chapel of St Onofrio and that of St Anthony, ruined to-day by the
damp. He left other paintings in S. Giustina and S. Matteo, which
were pulled down with the churches when Duke Cosimo was fortifying
the city. Almost on this very spot, near S. Giustina, at the foot of
the abutment of an ancient bridge, at the point where the river
enters the city, they there found a fine marble head of Appius
Ciccus, and one of his son, with an ancient epitaph, which are now in
the Duke's wardrobe. When Giovanni returned to Florence, at the time
when the middle arch of the