one wall is S. Filippo lying dead, with his friars about
him making lamentation; and in addition there is a dead child, who,
touching the bier on which S. Filippo lies, comes to life again, so that
he is first seen dead, and then revived and restored to life, and all
with a very beautiful, natural, and appropriate effect. In the last
picture on that side he represented the friars placing the garments of
S. Filippo on the heads of certain children; and there he made a
portrait of Andrea della Robbia, the sculptor, in an old man clothed in
red, who comes forward, stooping, with a staff in his hand. There, too,
he portrayed Luca, his son; even as in the other scene mentioned above,
in which S. Filippo lies dead, he made a portrait of another son of
Andrea, named Girolamo, a sculptor and very much his friend, who died
not long since in France.

Having thus finished that side of the cloister, and considering that if
the honour was great, the payment was small, Andrea resolved to give up
the rest of the work, however much the friar might complain. But the
latter would not release him from his bond without Andrea first
promising that he would paint two other scenes, at his own leisure and
convenience, however, and with an increase of payment; and thus they
came to terms.

[Illustration: THE ARRIVAL OF THE MAGI

(_After the fresco by =Andrea del Sarto=. Florence: SS. Annunziata_)

_Alinari_]

Having come into greater repute by reason of these works, Andrea
received commissions for many pictures and works of importance; among
others, one from the General of the Monks of Vallombrosa, for painting
an arch of the vaulting, with a Last Supper on the front wall, in the
Refectory of the Monastery of S. Salvi, without the Porta alla Croce. In
four medallions on that vault he painted four figures, S. Benedict, S.
Giovanni Gualberto, S. Salvi the Bishop, and S. Bernardo degli Uberti
of Florence, a friar of that Order and a Cardinal; and in the centre
he made a medallion containing three faces, which are one and the same,
to represent the Trinity. All this was very well executed for a work in
fresco, and Andrea, therefore, came to be valued at his true worth in
the art of painting. Whereupon he was commissioned at the instance of
Baccio d' Agnolo to paint in fresco, in a close on the steep path of
Orsanmichele, which leads to the Mercato Nuovo, the Annunciation still
to be seen there, executed on a minute scale, which brought him but