en as the wealth of the hospital had increased, so its church,
which was then without Florence and very small, dedicated to S. Egidio,
should be enlarged. Whereupon, having taken counsel thereon with Lorenzo
di Bicci, who was very much his friend, on September 5, in the year
1418, he began the new church, which was finished in a year in the
manner wherein it stands to-day, and was then solemnly consecrated by
Pope Martin V at the request of the said Ser Michele, who was the eighth
Director of the Hospital, and of the men of the family of Portinari.
This consecration Lorenzo afterwards painted, according to the wish of
Ser Michele, on the facade of that church, portraying there from life
that Pope and some Cardinals; and this work, as something new and
beautiful, was then much praised. Wherefore he obtained the honour of
being the first to paint in the principal church of his city--that is,
in S. Maria del Fiore, where, beneath the windows of each chapel, he
painted that Saint to whom it is dedicated, and then, on the pilasters
and throughout the church, the twelve Apostles with the crosses of
consecration; for that church had been most solemnly consecrated in that
same year by Pope Eugenius IV, the Venetian. In the same church the
Wardens of Works, by order of the State, caused him to paint in fresco,
on one wall, a tomb in imitation of marble, in memory of Cardinal
Corsini, who is portrayed there from nature on the sarcophagus; and
above that he made a similar one in memory of Maestro Luigi Marsili, a
very famous theologian, who went as ambassador, with Messer Luigi
Guicciardini and Messer Guccio di Gino, most honourable cavaliers, to
the Duke of Anjou.

[Illustration: LORENZO DI BICCI: MADONNA AND CHILD, WITH A DONOR

(_Empoli: Gallery. Panel_)]

Lorenzo was then summoned to Arezzo by Don Laurentino, Abbot of S.
Bernardo, a monastery of the Order of Monte Oliveto, in the principal
chapel of which he painted in fresco, for Messer Carlo Marsuppini,
stories of the life of S. Bernard. But while planning to paint the life
of S. Benedict in the cloister of the convent (I mean, after having
painted for the elder Francesco de' Bacci the principal chapel of the
Church of S. Francesco, where he wrought by himself the vaulting and
half of the arch) he fell sick of a pleurisy; wherefore, having himself
carried to Florence, he left directions that Marco da Montepulciano, his
disciple, should paint the scenes of the life of S. Be