r and of Giovanni Tossicani, their fellow-disciple. Tommaso drew
very well, as it may be seen in our book, in certain drawings wrought by
his hand with much diligence.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: See note on p. 57.]

GIOVANNI DAL PONTE

LIFE OF GIOVANNI DAL PONTE,

PAINTER OF FLORENCE

Although there is no truth and not much confidence to be placed in the
ancient proverb that the prodigal's purse is never empty, and although,
on the contrary, it is very true that he who does not live a
well-ordered life in his own degree lives at the last in want and dies
miserably, it is seen, nevertheless, that fortune sometimes aids rather
those who squander without restraint than those who are in all things
careful and self-restrained; and when the favour of fortune ceases,
there often comes death, to make up for her defection and for the bad
management of men, supervening at the very moment when such men would
begin with infinite dismay to recognize how miserable a thing it is to
have squandered in youth and to want in old age, living and labouring in
poverty, as would have happened to Giovanni da Santo Stefano a Ponte of
Florence, if, after having consumed his patrimony and much gain which
had been brought to his hands rather by fortune than by his merits, with
some inheritances that came to him from an unexpected source, he had not
finished at one and the same time the course of his life and all his
means.

This man, then, who was a disciple of Buonamico Buffalmacco, and who
imitated him more in attending to the pleasures of life than in seeking
to become an able painter, was born in the year 1307, and after being in
early youth a disciple of Buffalmacco, he made his first works in the
Chapel of S. Lorenzo, in the Pieve of Empoli, painting there in fresco
many scenes of the life of that Saint, with so great diligence that he
was summoned to Arezzo in the year 1344, a better development being
expected after so fine a beginning; and there he painted the Assumption
of Our Lady in a chapel in S. Francesco. And a little time afterwards,
being in some credit in that city for lack of other painters, he
painted the Chapel of S. Onofrio in the Pieve, with that of S. Antonio,
which to-day is spoilt by damp. He also made some other pictures that
were in S. Giustina and in S. Matteo, but these were thrown to the
ground by Duke Cosimo, together with the said churches, in the making of
fortifications for that city; and ex