n an act of entreaty. This woman
represents Pisa, her head being circled with a gold crown, while she
wears a garment full of circles and eagles, and being in much trouble
at sea she petitions the saint. But because Bruno complained when he
executed those figures that they were not life-like as those of
Buonamico were, the latter in jest, to teach him to make figures,
which if not life-like, should at least converse, made him put some
words issuing from the mouth of the woman who is entreating the
saint, and also the saint's reply to her, a device which Buonamico
had seen in the works executed by Cimabue in the same church. This
thing pleased Bruno and other foolish men of the time, just as to-day
it pleases certain clumsy fellows, who have thus employed vulgar
devices worthy of themselves. It is certainly curious that in this
way advice intended simply as a jest has been generally followed, so
much so that a great part of the Campo Santo done by masters of
repute is full of this clumsiness.

The works of Buonamico having greatly pleased the Pisans, those in
charge of the fabric of the Campo Santo commissioned him to do four
scenes in fresco from the beginning of the world until the building
of Noah's ark, surrounding them with an ornamentation, in which he
drew his own portrait from life, that is to say, in a border in the
middle and at the corners of which are some heads, among which, as I
have said, is his own. He wears a hood, just like the one that may be
seen above. This work contains a God who holds in his arms the
heavens and the elements, and all the apparatus of the universe, so
that Buonamico, explaining his scene with verses, like the paintings
of the age, wrote at the foot in capital letters with his own hand
the following sonnet, as may be seen, which for its antiquity and
simplicity of diction peculiar to the time, has seemed to me to be
worth insertion in this place, so that if it does not perchance give
much pleasure, though I think it will, yet it is a matter which will
perhaps bear testimony to the amount of the knowledge of the men of
that age:

"Voi che avvisate questa dipintura
Di Dio pietoso sommo creatore,
Lo qual fe' tutte cose con amore
Pesate, numerate ed in misura.
In nove gradi angelica natura
In ello empirio ciel pien di splendore,
Colui che non si muove et e motore,
Ciascuna cosa fe