Another method of painting on glass, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. Maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canvass; and above all Giordano, who taught it to several pupils. Among these, the best was Carlo Garofalo, who was invited to the court of Charles II. of Spain, to practise this species of painting,[180] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years.
[128] Although Vasari, Borghini, and Baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly illustrated that of Florence, with which they were best acquainted. To them succeeded the respectable authors of the Florentine Museum, and of the Series of the most celebrated Painters, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the Etruria Pittrice of the learned Sig. Ab. Lastri. Other anecdotes are to be found in the work of P. Richa On the Churches of Florence, and in Sig. Cambiagi's Guide to that City. Pisa too, has its Guide by the Cav. Titi; to which has succeeded the much larger work of Sig. da Morrona, above noticed. Siena has one by Sig. Pecci, Volterra another by Ab. Giachi, and Pescia and Valdinievole by the Ab. Ansaldi. Sig. Francesco Bernardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to Lucca after Marchiò; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. Meanwhile the Diario of Mons. Mansi affords considerable information.
[129] Condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. See Bottari's notes on the life of Michelangiolo, p. 152, in Florent. edit. 1772.
[130] See the fine eulogy on him by Sig. Durazzini, among his Panegyrics on illustrious Tuscans, where he corrects Vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of Lionardo before this year. Tom. iii. n. 25.
[131] See Sig. Piacenza, in his edition of Baldinucci, t. ii. p. 252. He has dedicated a long appendix to Vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through Vasari, Lomazzo, Borghini, Mariette, and other modern authors.
[132] "Leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." Lomazzo, Idea del Tempio della pittura, page 114.
[133] Both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to Andrea del Sarto. See what has been written by Vasari, and by M. Mariette, in the long letter concerning Vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of Lett. Pittoriche.
[134] It was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that Leo X. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.
[135] Vasari.
[136] Vasari, who published a life of him in 1550, and enlarged it in another edition; and Ascanio Condivi da Ripatransone, who printed one in 1553, ten years before the death of Bonarruoti.