Gentile of
Urbino, Bishop of Arezzo, was dwelling in that city, Giorgio
rediscovered the method of giving red and black colours to terra-cotta
vases, such as those that the ancient Aretines made up to the time of
King Porsena. Being a most industrious person, he made large vases with
the potter's wheel, one braccio and a half in height, which are still to
be seen in his house. Men say that while searching for vases in a place
where he thought that the ancients had worked, he found three arches of
their ancient furnaces three braccia below the surface in a field of
clay near the bridge at Calciarella, a place called by that name; and
round these he found some of the mixture for making the vases, and many
broken ones, with four that were whole. These last were given by
Giorgio, through the mediation of the Bishop, to the Magnificent Lorenzo
de' Medici on his visiting Arezzo; wherefore they were the source and
origin of his entering into the service of that most exalted family, in
which he remained ever afterwards. Giorgio worked very well in relief,
as may be seen from some heads by his hand that are in his house. He had
five sons, who all followed the same calling; two of them, Lazzaro and
Bernardo, were good craftsmen, of whom the latter died very young in
Rome; and in truth, by reason of his intelligence, which is known to
have been dexterous and ready, if death had not snatched him so
prematurely from his house, he would have brought honour to his native
place.

The elder Lazzaro died in 1452, and his son, Giorgio, died in 1484 at
the age of sixty-eight; and both were buried in the Pieve of Arezzo at
the foot of their own Chapel of S. Giorgio, where the following verses
were set up after a time in praise of Lazzaro:

ARETII EXULTET TELLUS CLARISSIMA; NAMQUE EST
REBUS IN ANGUSTIS, IN TENUIQUE LABOR.
VIX OPERUM ISTIUS PARTES COGNOSCERE POSSIS:
MYRMECIDES TACEAT; CALLICRATES SILEAT.

Finally, the last Giorgio Vasari, writer of this history, in gratitude
for the benefits for which he has to thank in great measure the
excellence of his ancestors, having received the principal chapel of the
said Pieve as a gift from his fellow-citizens and from the Wardens of
Works and Canons, as was told in the Life of Pietro Laurati, and having
brought it to the condition that has been described, has made a new tomb
in the middle of the choir, which is behind the altar; and in this he
has laid the bones of the said Laz