bodies, the tempest, the fury of the winds, the
flashes of the lightning, the shattering of trees, and the terror of
men, that it is beyond all description. And he made, foreshortened in
perspective, a corpse from which a raven is picking out the eyes, and a
drowned boy, whose body, being full of water, is swollen out into the
shape of a very great arch. He also represented various human emotions,
such as the little fear of the water shown by two men who are fighting
on horseback, and the extreme terror of death seen in a woman and a man
who are mounted on a buffalo, which is filling with water from behind,
so that they are losing all hope of being able to save themselves; and
the whole work is so good and so excellent, that it brought him very
great fame. He diminished the figures, moreover, by means of lines in
perspective, and made mazzocchi and other things, truly very beautiful
in such a work. Below this story, likewise, he painted the drunkenness
of Noah, with the contemptuous action of his son Ham--in whom he
portrayed Dello, the Florentine painter and sculptor, his friend--with
Shem and Japhet, his other sons, who are covering him up as he lies
showing his nakedness. Here, likewise, he made in perspective a cask
that curves on every side, which was held something very beautiful, and
also a pergola covered with grapes, the wood-work of which, composed of
squared planks, goes on diminishing to a point; but here he was in
error, since the diminishing of the plane below, on which the figures
are standing, follows the lines of the pergola, and the cask does not
follow these same receding lines; wherefore I marvel greatly that a man
so accurate and diligent could make an error so notable. He made there
also the Sacrifice, with the Ark open and drawn in perspective, with the
rows of perches in the upper part, distributed row by row; these were
the resting-places of the birds, many kinds of which are seen issuing
and flying forth in foreshortening, while in the sky there is seen
God the Father, who is appearing over the sacrifice that Noah and his
sons are making; and this figure, of all those that Paolo made in this
work, is the most difficult, for it is flying, with the head
foreshortened, towards the wall, and has such force and relief that it
seems to be piercing and breaking through it. Besides this, Noah has
round him an infinite number of diverse animals, all most beautiful. In
short, he gave to all this work so g