and likewise
many learned men of that Order, and men distinguished for dignity of
rank, such as Bishops, Cardinals, and Popes, among whom are portraits
from nature, in two medallions on the vaulting, of Pope Nicholas IV and
Pope Alexander V. In all these figures, although Lorenzo made their
garments grey, he varied them, nevertheless, by reason of the good
practice that he had in working, in a manner that they are all different
one from the other; some incline to reddish, others to bluish, while
some are dark and others lighter, and in short, all are varied and
worthy of consideration; and what is more, it is said that he wrought
this work with so great facility and readiness, that being called once
by the Prior, who was bearing his expenses, to his dinner, at the very
moment when he had made the intonaco for a figure and had begun it, he
answered: "Pour out the soup. Let me finish this figure, and I'm with
you." Wherefore it is with good reason that men say that Lorenzo had so
great rapidity of hand, so great practice in colouring, and so great
resolution, that no other man ever had more.

By his hand are the shrine in fresco which is on the corner of the
Convent of the Nuns of Foligno, and the Madonna and some saints that are
over the door of the church of that convent, among whom is a S. Francis
who is espousing Poverty. In the Church of the Order of Camaldoli in
Florence, also, he painted for the Company of the Martyrs some scenes of
the martyrdom of some saints, and two chapels in the church, one on
either side of the principal chapel. And because these pictures gave
universal pleasure to the whole city, after he had finished them he was
commissioned by the family of the Salvestrini--which to-day is almost
extinct, there being to my knowledge none left save a friar of the
Angeli in Florence, called Fra Nemesio, a good and worthy churchman--to
paint a wall of the Church of the Carmine, whereon he made the scene
when the martyrs, being condemned to death, are stripped naked and made
to walk barefoot over spikes strewn by ministers of the tyrants, while
they were going to be placed on the cross; and higher up they are seen
placed thereon, in various extravagant attitudes. In this work, which
was the largest that had ever been made up to that time, everything is
seen to have been done, according to the knowledge of those times, with
much mastery and design, for it is all full of those various emotions
that nature arou