himself in his study of painting in places
where work was not so minutely examined, as the doctors still do, who
make experiments in their art on the hides of needy countrymen, for some
time he accepted all the work that came to his hand, and therefore
painted a shrine on the bridge of Scandicci, without the Porta a S.
Friano, in the manner wherein it is still seen to-day, and at Cerbaia,
on a wall below a portico, he painted many saints very creditably,
together with a Madonna. Next, being commissioned by the family of the
Martini to paint a chapel in S. Marco in Florence, he wrought in fresco
on the walls many stories of the Madonna, and on the panel the Virgin
herself in the midst of many saints; and in the same church, over the
Chapel of S. Giovanni Evangelista, belonging to the family of the Landi,
he painted in fresco an Angel Raphael with Tobias. And afterwards, in
the year 1418, for Ricciardo di Messer Niccolo Spinelli, on the facade
of the Convent of S. Croce facing the square, he painted a large scene
in fresco of S. Thomas looking for the wound in the side of Jesus
Christ, and beside him and round him all the other Apostles, who,
kneeling reverently, are watching this event. And beside the said scene
he made, likewise in fresco, a S. Christopher twelve braccia and a half
high, which is something rare, because up to then, excepting the S.
Christopher of Buffalmacco, there had not been seen a greater figure,
nor, for something so large, any image more creditable or better
proportioned in all its parts than that one, although it is not in a
good manner; not to mention that these pictures, both the one and the
other, were wrought with so much mastery, that, although they have been
exposed to the air for many years and buffeted by the rains and
tempests, being turned to the North, yet they have never lost their
vividness of colouring, nor have they been injured in any part. Within
the door, moreover, which is between these figures, called the Martello
door, the same Lorenzo, at the request of the said Ricciardo and of the
Prior of the convent, made a Crucifixion with many figures, and, on the
walls around, the confirmation of the Rule of S. Francis by Pope
Honorius, and beside it the martyrdom of certain friars of that Order,
who went to preach the Faith among the Saracens. On the arches and on
the vaulting he made certain Kings of France, friars and devout
followers of S. Francis, and he portrayed them from nature;