picted the same Pope conferring the monk's habit
and many privileges on the Director of the Hospital. In this scene there
were far fewer figures than it appeared to require, because it was cut
in half by a shrine containing a Madonna, which has been removed
recently by Don Isidoro Montaguto, the present Director of that place,
in the reconstructing of a principal door for the building; and
Francesco Brini, a young painter of Florence, has been commissioned to
paint the rest of the scene. But to return to Gherardo; it would
scarcely have been possible for even a well-practised master to
accomplish without great fatigue and diligence what he did in that work,
which is wrought most excellently in fresco. For the church of the same
hospital Gherardo illuminated an infinite number of books, with some for
S. Maria del Fiore in Florence, and certain others for Matthias
Corvinus, King of Hungary. These last, on the death of the said King,
together with some by the hand of Vante and of other masters who worked
for that King in Florence, were purchased and taken over by the
Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici, who placed them among those so greatly
celebrated which were being collected for the formation of the library
afterwards built by Pope Clement VII, which is now being thrown open to
the public by order of Duke Cosimo.

Having thus developed, as has been related, from a master of
illumination into a painter, in addition to the said works, he made some
great figures in a large cartoon for the Evangelists that he had to make
in mosaic in the Chapel of S. Zanobi. But before the Magnificent Lorenzo
de' Medici had obtained for him the commission for the said chapel,
wishing to show that he understood the art of mosaic, and that he could
work without a companion, he made a life-size head of S. Zanobi, which
remained in S. Maria del Fiore, and on days of the highest solemnity it
is set up on the altar of the said Saint, or in some other place, as a
rare thing.

The while that Gherardo was labouring at these things, there were
brought to Florence certain prints in the German manner wrought by
Martin and by Albrecht Duerer; whereupon, being much pleased with that
sort of engraving, he set himself to work with the graver and copied
some of those plates very well, as may be seen from certain examples
that are in our book, together with some drawings by the same man's
hand. Gherardo painted many pictures which were sent abroad, one of
whic