to, his master. And although all
this work is beautiful, what he painted on the vaulting of this niche is
without doubt better than all the rest, for in representing the Madonna
ascending into Heaven, besides making the Apostles each four braccia
high, wherein he showed greatness of spirit and was the first to try to
give grandness to the manner, he gave so beautiful an air to the heads
and so great loveliness to the vestments that in those times nothing
more could have been desired. Likewise, in the faces of a choir of
angels who are flying in the air round the Madonna, dancing with
graceful movements, and appearing to sing, he painted a gladness
truly angelic and divine, above all because he made the angels
sounding diverse instruments, with their eyes all fixed and intent on
another choir of angels, who, supported by a cloud in the form of an
almond, are bearing the Madonna to Heaven, with beautiful attitudes and
all surrounded by rainbows. This work, seeing that it rightly gave
pleasure, was the reason that he was commissioned to make in distemper
the panel for the high-altar of the aforesaid Pieve; wherein, in five
parts, with figures as far as the knees and large as life, he made Our
Lady with the Child in her arms, and S. John the Baptist and S. Matthew
on the one side, and on the other the Evangelist and S. Donatus, with
many little figures in the predella and in the border of the panel
above, all truly beautiful and executed in very good manner. This panel,
after I had rebuilt the high-altar of the aforesaid Pieve completely
anew, at my own expense and with my own hand, was set up over the altar
of S. Cristofano at the foot of the church. Nor do I wish to grudge the
labour of saying in this place, with this occasion and not wide of the
subject, that I, moved by Christian piety and by the affection that I
bear towards this venerable and ancient collegiate church, and for the
reason that in it, in my earliest childhood, I learnt my first lessons,
and that it contains the remains of my fathers: moved, I say, by these
reasons, and by it appearing to me that it was wellnigh deserted, I have
restored it in a manner that it can be said that it has returned from
death to life; for besides changing it from a dark to a well-lighted
church by increasing the windows that were there before and by making
others, I have also removed the choir, which, being in front, used to
occupy a great part of the church, and to the great sa