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the life of Our Lady, but in a style so inferior to the Resurrection
of Lazarus that anyone could perceive that he had little desire to
devote all his energies to the study of painting. In the whole of
this great work there is not more than a single good scene, namely,
that in which Our Lady is in an apartment surrounded by a number of
maidens, whose habits and headdresses vary according to the divers
customs of the time, and who are engaged in various employments, some
spinning, some sewing, some winding silk, and some weaving and doing
other things, all very well conceived and executed by Agnolo.

Similarly in painting in fresco the principal chapel of the church of
S. Croce for the noble family of the Alberti, he represented the
incidents which took place on the finding of the Cross, executing the
work with much skill, though it is somewhat lacking in design, the
colouring alone being meritorious. He succeeded much better
afterwards in some other paintings in fresco in the chapel of the
Bardi, and in some stories of St Louis in the same church. He worked
capriciously, sometimes with great care and sometimes with little.
Thus in S. Spirito at Florence, where he did the inside of a door
leading from the piazza to the convent, and above another door a
Madonna and child, with St Augustine and St Nicholas, all in
fresco--they are all so well done that they look as if they had been
painted yesterday. The secret of working in mosaic had as it were
descended to Agnolo by inheritance, and in his house he had the
instruments and other apparatus used by his grandfather Gaddo;
accordingly to para the time, and for one reason or another, he did
some things in mosaic when he had the whim. Thus since many of the
marble facings of the exterior of S. Giovanni were wasted by time,
and as the damp had pierced through and done considerable injury to
the mosaics previously executed there by Andrea Tafi, the Consuls of
the Art of the Merchants proposed to restore the greater part of this
marble covering, in order that no further damage should be done, and
also to repair the mosaics. The commission for this was given to
Agnolo, and in the year 1346 he caused the building to be covered
with new marble, overlaying the joints to a distance of two fingers
with great care, notching the half of each stone as far as the
middle. He then cemented them together with a mixture of mastic and
wax, and completed the whole with such care that from tha