rom nature, done both in marble and in painting, in a manner that
it was held the best work that he had ever yet made. Next, work being
resumed on the building of the Vescovado, Margaritone carried it very
far on, following the design of Lapo; but he did not, however, deliver
it finished, because a few years later, in the year 1289, the wars
between the Florentines and the Aretines were renewed, by the fault of
Guglielmino Ubertini, Bishop and Lord of Arezzo, assisted by the Tarlati
da Pietramala and by the Pazzi di Valdarno, although evil came to them
thereby, for they were routed and slain at Campaldino; and there was
spent in that war all the money left by the Pope for the building of the
Vescovado. And therefore the Aretines ordained that in place of this
there should serve the impost paid by the district (thus do they call a
tax), as a particular revenue for that work; which impost has lasted up
to our own day, and continues to last.

Now returning to Margaritone: from what is seen in his works, as regards
painting, he was the first who considered what a man must do when he
works on panels of wood, to the end that they may stay firm in the
joinings, and that they may not show fissures and cracks opening out
after they have been painted; for he was used to put over the whole
surface of the panels a canvas of linen cloth, attached with a strong
glue made from shreds of parchment and boiled over a fire; and then
over the said canvas he spread gesso, as is seen in many panels by him
and by others. He wrought, besides, on gesso mingled with the same glue,
friezes and diadems in relief and other ornaments in the round; and he
was the inventor of the method of applying Armenian bole, and of
spreading gold-leaf thereon and burnishing it. All these things, never
seen before, are seen in many of his works, and in particular in the
Pieve of Arezzo, in an altar-front wherein are stories of S. Donatus,
and in S. Agnesa and S. Niccolo in the same city.

Finally, he wrought many works in his own country, which went abroad;
some of which are at Rome, in S. Giovanni and in S. Pietro, and some at
Pisa, in S. Caterina, where, in the tramezzo[10] of the church, there is
set up over an altar a panel with S. Catherine on it, and many scenes
from her life with little figures, and a S. Francis with many scenes on
a panel, on a ground of gold. And in the upper Church of S. Francesco
d'Assisi there is a Crucifix by his hand, painted in the