er,
Andrea, taking a tile, called to his wife Lucrezia and said to her:
"Come here, for these colours are left over, and I wish to make your
portrait, so that all may see how well you have preserved your beauty
even at your time of life, and yet may know how your appearance has
changed, which will make this one different from your early portraits."
But the woman, who may have had something else in her mind, would not
stand still; and Andrea, as it were from a feeling that he was near his
end, took a mirror and made a portrait of himself on that tile, of such
perfection, that it seems alive and as real as nature; and that portrait
is in the possession of the same Madonna Lucrezia, who is still living.

He also portrayed a Canon of Pisa, very much his friend; and the
portrait, which is lifelike and very beautiful, is still in Pisa. He
then began for the Signoria the cartoons for the paintings to be
executed on the balustrades of the Ringhiera in the Piazza, with many
beautiful things of fancy to represent the quarters of the city, and
with the banners of the Consuls of the chief Guilds supported by some
little boys, and also ornaments in the form of images of all the
virtues, and likewise the most famous mountains and rivers of the
dominion of Florence. But this work, thus begun, remained unfinished on
account of Andrea's death, as was also the case with a panel--although
it was all but finished--which he painted for the Abbey of the Monks of
Vallombrosa at Poppi in the Casentino. In that panel he painted an
Assumption of Our Lady, who is surrounded by many little boys, with S.
Giovanni Gualberto, S. Bernardo the Cardinal (a monk of their Order, as
has been related), S. Catharine, and S. Fedele; and, unfinished as it
is, the picture is now in that Abbey of Poppi. The same happened to a
panel of no great size, which, when finished, was to have gone to Pisa.
But he left completely finished a very beautiful picture which is now in
the house of Filippo Salviati, and some others.

About the same time Giovan Battista della Palla, having bought all the
sculptures and pictures of note that he could obtain, and causing copies
to be made of those that he could not buy, had despoiled Florence of a
vast number of choice works, without the least scruple, in order to
furnish a suite of rooms for the King of France, which was to be richer
in suchlike ornaments than any other in the world. And this man,
desiring that Andrea should retur