e life of
St Benedict in the cloister, from a design which he had made and left
with D. Laurentino. These Marco did to the best of his ability,
completing them in the year 1448 on 24th April, the whole work being
in chiaroscuro, and his name may be seen written there, with verses
which are not less rude than the painting. Lorenzo returned to his
country, and, having recovered, he painted on the same wall of the
convent of S. Croce, where he had done the St Christopher, the
Assumption of Our Lady surrounded in Heaven by a choir of angels, and
below a St Thomas receiving the girdle. In the execution of this
work, as Lorenzo was sick, he was assisted by Donatello, then quite a
youth, and by means of such effective aid it was completed in the
year 1450, so that I believe it to be the best work both in design
and in colouring that Lorenzo ever produced. Not long after, being an
old man and worn out, he died at the age of about sixty years,
leaving two sons who practised painting, one of whom, named Bicci,
assisted him in many of his works, and the other, called Neri, drew
the portraits of his father and himself in the chapel of the Lenzi in
Ognissanti, in two medallions, with letters about them giving the
names of both. In this same chapel Neri did some stories of Our Lady,
and took great pains to copy many of the costumes of his day, both of
men and women. He did the altar picture for the chapel in tempera,
and painted some pictures in the Abbey of S. Felice, of the
Camaldoline order, on the piazza of Florence, as well as the high
altar of S. Michele of Arezzo of the same order. Outside Arezzo, at
S. Maria delle Grazie, in the church of S. Bernardino, he did a
Madonna with the people of Arezzo under her mantle, and on one side
St Bernardino is kneeling, with a wooden cross in his hand, such as
he was accustomed to carry when he went through Arezzo preaching; and
on the other side are St Nicholas and St Michael the Archangel. The
predella contains the acts of St Bernardino and the miracles which,
he performed, especially those done in that place. The same Neri did
the high altar picture for S. Romolo at Florence, and in the chapel
of the Spini in S. Trinita he did the life of St John Gualbert in
fresco, as well as the picture in tempera which is above the altar.
From these works it is clear that if Neri had lived, instead of dying
at the age of thirty-six, he would have done many better and more
numerous works than his fath