incrustation--that is to
say, with lime, gypsum, and powdered brick all mixed together; so
suitably that the pictures which he afterwards made thereon have been
preserved up to the present day. And they would be still better if the
negligence of those who should have taken care of them had not allowed
them to be much injured by the damp, because the fact that this was not
provided for, as was easily possible, has been the reason that these
pictures, having suffered from damp, have been spoilt in certain places,
and the flesh-colours have been blackened, and the intonaco has peeled
off; not to mention that the nature of gypsum, when it has been mixed
with lime, is to corrode in time and to grow rotten, whence it arises
that afterwards, perforce, it spoils the colours, although it appears at
the beginning to take a good and firm hold. In these scenes, besides the
portrait of Messer Farinata degli Uberti, there are many beautiful
figures, and above all certain villagers, who, in carrying the grievous
news to Job, could not be more full of feeling nor show better than they
do the grief that they felt over the lost cattle and over the other
misadventures. Likewise there is amazing grace in the figure of a
man-servant who is standing with a fan beside Job, who is covered with
ulcers and almost abandoned by all; and although he is well done in
every part, he is marvellous in the attitude that he strikes in chasing
the flies from his leprous and stinking master with one hand, while with
the other he is holding his nose in disgust, in order not to notice the
stench. In like manner, the other figures in these scenes and the heads
both of the males and of the women are very beautiful; and the draperies
are wrought to such a degree of softness that it is no marvel if this
work acquired for him so great fame, both in that city and abroad, that
Pope Benedict IX of Treviso sent one of his courtiers into Tuscany to
see what sort of man was Giotto, and of what kind his works, having
designed to have some pictures made in S. Pietro. This courtier, coming
in order to see Giotto and to hear what other masters there were in
Florence excellent in painting and in mosaic, talked to many masters in
Siena. Then, having received drawings from them, he came to Florence,
and having gone into the shop of Giotto, who was working, declared to
him the mind of the Pope and in what way it was proposed to make use of
his labour, and at last asked him for s