asaccio the work remained
unfinished, and was afterwards completed by Filippino. In the scene
wherein S. Peter is baptizing, a naked man, who is trembling and
shivering with cold among the others who are being baptized, is greatly
esteemed, having been wrought with very beautiful relief and sweet
manner; which figure has ever been held in reverence and admiration by
all craftsmen, both ancient and modern. For this reason that chapel has
been frequented continually up to our own day by innumerable draughtsmen
and masters; and there still are therein some heads so lifelike and so
beautiful, that it may truly be said that no master of that age
approached so nearly as this man did to the moderns. His labours
therefore deserve infinite praise, and above all because he gave form in
his art to the beautiful manner of our times. And that this is true is
proved by the fact that all the most celebrated sculptors and painters,
who have lived from his day to our own, have become excellent and famous
by exercising themselves and studying in this chapel--namely, Fra
Giovanni da Fiesole, Fra Filippo, Filippino, who finished it, Alesso
Baldovinetti, Andrea dal Castagno, Andrea del Verrocchio, Domenico del
Ghirlandajo, Sandro di Botticello, Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino,
Fra Bartolommeo di San Marco, Mariotto Albertinelli, and the most divine
Michelagnolo Buonarroti; likewise Raffaello da Urbino, who owed to this
chapel the beginning of his beautiful manner, Granaccio, Lorenzo di
Credi, Ridolfo del Ghirlandajo, Andrea del Sarto, Rosso, Franciabigio,
Baccio Bandinelli, Alonso Spagnuolo, Jacopo da Pontormo, Pierino del
Vaga, and Toto del Nunziata; and in short, all those who have sought to
learn that art have ever gone to this chapel to learn and to grasp the
precepts and the rules for good work from the figures of Masaccio. And
if I have not named many foreigners and many Florentines who have gone
to that chapel for the sake of study, let it suffice to say that where
the heads of art go, the members also follow. But although the works of
Masaccio have ever been in so great repute, it is nevertheless the
opinion--nay, the firm belief--of many, that he would have produced even
greater fruits in his art, if death, which tore him from us at the age
of twenty-six, had not snatched him away from us so prematurely. But
either by reason of envy, or because good things rarely have any long
duration, he died in the flower of his youth, and that