the life of St John the
Baptist, beginning with the apparition of the angel to Zacharias the
priest and continuing to John's beheading and the burial of his body
by the disciples. All these things are rude, without design and
without art, and they are no advance upon the Byzantine style of the
time so that I cannot praise them absolutely, though they merit some
commendation, when one considers the methods in use at the time and
the imperfect state in which pictorial art then was. Besides, the
work is sound and the pieces of mosaic are very well set. In short,
the latter part of the work is much better or rather less bad than is
the beginning, although the whole, when compared with the works
of to-day rather excites laughter than pleasure or admiration.
Ultimately Andrea made the Christ, 7 braccia high, for the tribune on
the wall of the principal chapel, which may be seen there to-day, and
this he did by himself without the aid of Apollonio, to his great
glory. Having become famous throughout Italy by these works and being
reputed excellent in his own land, he received the richest honours
and rewards. It was certainly a great good fortune for Andrea to be
born at a time when only rude works were produced, so that things
which should have been considered of very slight account or even
worthless, were held in reasonable repute. The same thing happened
to fra Jacopo da Turrita, of the order of St Francis, who received
extraordinary rewards for the mosaics which he executed for the
small choir behind the altar of S. Giovanni, although they deserved
little praise, and he was afterwards invited to Rome as a great
master, where he was employed on some works in the chapel of the high
altar of S. Giovanni Lateram and in that of S. Maria Maggiore. He was
next invited to Pisa, where he did the Evangelists and other things
which are in the principal tribune of the Duomo, in the same style as
the other things which he executed, although he was assisted by
Andrea Tafi and Gaddo Gaddi. These were finished by Vicino, for
Jacopo left them in a very imperfect state. The works of these
masters obtained credit for some time, but when the productions of
Andrea, Cimabue, and the rest had to bear comparison with those of
Giotto, as will be said when the time comes, people came to recognise
in which direction perfection in art lay, for they saw how great a
difference there was between the first manner of Cimabue and that of
Giotto in the delin