ed arches, low and poor in lights,
and I doubted that I was like to win little honour thereby. However,
being pressed by Don Miniato Pitti and Don Ippolito da Milano, my very
dear friends, who were then Visitors to that Order, finally I accepted
the undertaking. Whereupon, recognizing that I would not be able to do
anything good save only with a great abundance of ornaments, dazzling
the eyes of all who might see the work with a variety and multitude of
figures, I resolved to have all the vaulting of the refectory wrought in
stucco, in order to remove by means of rich compartments in the modern
manner all the old-fashioned and clumsy appearance of those arches. In
this I was much assisted by the vaults and walls, which are made, as is
usual in that city, of blocks of tufa, which cut like wood, or even
better, like bricks not completely baked; and thus, cutting them, I was
able to sink squares, ovals, and octagons, and also to thicken them with
additions of the same tufa by means of nails. Having then reduced those
vaults to good proportions with that stucco-work, which was the first to
be wrought in Naples in the modern manner, and in particular the facades
and end-walls of that refectory, I painted there six panels in oils,
seven braccia high, three to each end-wall. In three that are over the
entrance of the refectory is the Manna raining down upon the Hebrew
people, in the presence of Moses and Aaron, and the people gathering it
up; wherein I strove to represent a variety of attitudes and vestments
in the men, women, and children, and the emotion wherewith they are
gathering up and storing the Manna, rendering thanks to God. On the
end-wall that is at the head is Christ at table in the house of Simon,
and Mary Magdalene with tears washing His feet and drying them with her
hair, showing herself all penitent for her sins; which story is divided
into three pictures, in the centre the supper, on the right hand a
buttery with a credence full of vases in various fantastic forms, and on
the left hand a steward who is bringing up the viands. The vaulting,
then, was divided into three parts; in one the subject is Faith, in the
second Religion, and in the third Eternity, and each of these forms a
centre with eight Virtues about it, demonstrating to the monks that in
that refectory they eat what is requisite for the perfection of their
lives. To enrich the spaces of the vaulting, I made them full of
grotesques, which serve as orn