picture or one more true to nature. In the next part,
which is beside that named above, three figures (who are marvelling to
see the Blessed Ranieri showing the Devil, in the form of a cat on a
barrel, to a fat host, who has the air of a gay companion, and who, all
fearful, is commending himself to the Saint) can be said to be truly
very beautiful, being very well executed in the attitudes, the manner of
the draperies, the variety of the heads, and all the other parts. Not
far away are the host's womenfolk, and they, too, could not be wrought
with more grace, Antonio having made them with certain tucked-up
garments and with certain ways so peculiar to women who serve in
hostelries, that nothing better can be imagined. Nor could that scene
likewise be more pleasing than it is, wherein the Canons of the Duomo of
Pisa, in very beautiful vestments of those times, no little different
from those that are used to-day and very graceful, are receiving S.
Ranieri at table, all the figures being made with much consideration.
Next, in the painting of the death of the said Saint, he expressed very
well not only the effect of weeping, but also the movement of certain
angels who are bearing his soul to Heaven, surrounded by a light most
resplendent and made with beautiful invention. And truly one cannot but
marvel as one sees, in the bearing of the body of that Saint by the
clergy to the Duomo, certain priests who are singing, for in their
gestures, in the actions of their persons, and in all their movements,
as they chant diverse parts, they bear a marvellous resemblance to a
choir of singers; and in that scene, so it is said, is the portrait of
the Bavarian.[1] In like manner, the miracles that Ranieri wrought as
he was borne to his tomb, and those that he wrought in another place
when already laid to rest therein in the Duomo, were painted with very
great diligence by Antonio, who made there blind men receiving their
sight, paralytics regaining the use of their members, men possessed by
the Devil being delivered, and other miracles, all represented very
vividly. But among all the other figures, that of a dropsical man
deserves to be considered with marvel, for the reason that, with the
face withered, with the lips shrivelled, and with the body swollen, he
is such that a living man could not show more than does this picture the
very great thirst of the dropsical and the other effects of that malady.
A wonderful thing, too, in those t