but yet not with that perfection which marked the pictures described
above. But he, excusing himself for this to many of his friends, and
particularly on one occasion to Giorgio Vasari, said that since he was
away from the air of Siena and from certain comforts of his own, he did
not seem to be able to do anything.

Having therefore returned home, determined that he would never again go
away to work elsewhere, he painted for the Nuns of S. Paolo, near S.
Marco, an altar-piece in oils of the Nativity of Our Lady, with some
nurses, and S. Anne in a bed that is foreshortened and represented as
standing within a door; and in a dark shadow is a woman who is drying
clothes, without any other light but that which comes from the blaze of
the fire. In the predella, which is full of charm, are three scenes in
distemper--the Presentation of the Virgin at the Temple, her Marriage,
and the Adoration of the Magi. In the Mercanzia, a tribunal in that
city, the officials have a little altar-piece which they say was painted
by Domenico when he was young; it is very beautiful, and it contains in
the centre a S. Paul seated, and on one side his Conversion, in little
figures, and on the other the scene of his Beheading.

Finally, Domenico was commissioned to paint the great recess of the
Duomo, which is at the end behind the high-altar. In this he first made
a decoration of stucco with foliage and figures, all with his own hand,
and two Victories in the vacant spaces in the semicircle; which
decoration was in truth a very rich and beautiful work. Then in the
centre he painted in fresco the Ascension of Christ into Heaven; and
from the cornice downwards he painted three pictures divided by columns
in relief, and executed in perspective. In the middle picture, which has
above it an arch in perspective, are Our Lady, S. Peter, and S. John;
and in the spaces at the sides are ten Apostles, five on each side, all
in various attitudes and gazing at Christ, who is ascending into Heaven;
and above each of the two pictures of the Apostles is an Angel in
foreshortening, the two together representing those two Angels who,
after the Ascension, declared that He had risen into Heaven. This work
is certainly admirable, but it would have been even more so if Domenico
had given beautiful expressions to the heads; as it is, they have
something in the expressions that is not very pleasing, and it appears
that in his old age he adopted for his countenances a