llent representation of the
activity of the mariners, comprising everything that is usually done
in such case. Some are casting into the greedy sea without a thought
the valuable merchandise won with so much toil, some are running to
preserve the ship which is splitting, and in short performing all the
other duties of seamen which it would take too long to tell. Suffice
it to say that all are executed with remarkable vigour, and in a fine
style. In the same place beneath the lives of the holy fathers
painted by Pietro Laurati of Siena, Antonio did the bodies of St
Oliver and the Abbot Paphnuce, and many circumstances of their lives,
represented on a marble sarcophagus, the figure being very well
painted. In short, all the works of Antonio in the Campo Santo are
such that they are universally considered, and with good cause, to be
the best of the entire series of works produced there by many
excellent masters over a considerable interval of time. In addition
to the particulars already mentioned, Antonio did everything in
fresco, and never retouched anything _a secco_. This is the reason
why his colours have remained so fresh to the present day, and this
should teach artists to recognise the injury that is done to pictures
and works by retouching _a secco_ things done in fresco with other
colours, as is said in the theories, for it is an established fact
that this retouching ages the painting, and the new colours which
have no body of their own will not stand the test of time, being
tempered with gum-tragacanth, egg, size, or some such thing which
varnishes what is beneath it, and it does not permit the lapse of
time and the air to purge what has been actually painted in fresco
upon the soft stucco, as they would do had not other colours been
superimposed after the drying. Upon the completion of this truly
admirable work Antonio was worthily rewarded by the Pisans, who
always entertained a great affection for him. He then returned to
Florence, where he painted at Nuovoli outside the gate leading to
Prato, in a tabernacle at Giovanni degli Agli, a dead Christ, with a
quantity of figures, the story of the Magi and the Last Judgment, all
very fine. Invited next to the Certosa, he painted for the
Acciaiuoli, who built that place, the picture of the high altar,
which survived to our own day, when it was consumed by fire through
the carelessness of a sacristan of the monastery, who left the censer
hung at the altar full of fire