years he spent on earth after his first death, he was very
pitiful to the unfortunate and a great giver of alms.

THE MERRY-HEARTED BUFFALMACCO

TO EUGENE MUeNTZ

THE MERRY-HEARTED BUFFALMACCO

_Buonamico di Cristofano detto Buffalmacco pittore Fiorentino, il qual
fu discepolo d' Andrea Tafi, e come uomo burlevole celebrato da Messer
Giovanni Boccaccio nel suo Decamerone, fu come si sa carissimo
compagno di Bruno e di Calendrino pittori ancor essi faceti e
piacevole, e, come si puo vedere nell' opere sue sparse per tutta
Toscana, di assai buon giudizio nell' arte sua del dipignere._

_(Vite de' piu eccellenti pittori_, da Messer Giorgio Vasari.--"Vita
di Buonamico Buffalmacco.")[1]

[Footnote 1: "Buonamico di Cristofano, known as Buffalmacco, a
Florentine painter, the same that was pupil of Andrea Tafi, and
celebrated as a burlesque character by Messer Giovanni Boccaccio in his
_Decameron_ was as we know bosom friend of Bruno and Calendrino, also
painters and of an even more witty and merry humour than himself, and as
may be seen in his works scattered throughout Tuscany, of no mean
judgement in his art of painting." _(Lives of the most Excellent
Painters_ by Messer Giorgio Vasari.--"Life of Buonamico Buffalmacco.")]

I

THE COCKROACHES

In his callow youth, Buonamico Cristofani, Florentine, surnamed
Buffalmacco by reason of his merry humour, served his apprenticeship in
the workshop of Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic. Now the said
Tafi was a very knowledgeable master. Sojourning at Venice in the days
when Apollonius was covering the walls of San Marco with mosaics, he had
discovered by means of a trick certain secrets the Greek craftsmen were
for keeping sedulously to themselves. Returning to his native city, he
won so high a repute in the art of composing pictures by arranging
together a countless number of little differently coloured cubes of
glass, he could not supply all the demands addressed to him for works of
the sort, and all day and every day, from matins to vespers, he was
busy, mounted on a scaffold in some Church or other, depicting the dead
Christ, or Christ in His glory, the Patriarchs and Prophets, or the
history of Job or of Noah. And as he was likewise keen to paint in
fresco, with pounded colours, in the manner of the Greeks, which was
then the only one known, he refused himself all rest, and gave his
apprentices none either. He used to tell them: