Original Treatises (Volume 1); Dating from the Xiith to Xviiith Centuries on the Arts of Painting, in Oil, Miniature, Mosaic, and on Glass of Gilding, (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: was considered by all masters, foreign as well as native, as the finest work of the kind which had ever been seen in Italy. He afterwards worked at Rome and at Pisa, and died in 1312. The secret of working in mosaic was inherited by Agnolo, the son of Taddeo,1 who in 1346 repaired some of the mosaics executed by Andrea Tafi in the roof of S. Giovanni at Florence. He fixed the cubes of glass so firmly into the ground, with a stucco composed of mastic2 and wax melted together, that neither the roof nor the vaulting had received any injury from water from the period of its completion until the time of Vasari. From Agnolo Gaddi the secrets of the art were transmitted to Cennino Cennini, who, in his Treatise on Painting, left them as an heir-loom to posterity. That Cennini actually treated on mosaics in his work, is related by Vasari;3 but as this subject is not mentioned in the MS. published by Tambroni, it was considered that Vasari was mistaken, and that he had spoken of the MS. without having read it. Subsequent researches,4 however, have proved that he was right. Besides the MS. in the Laurenziana, the Riccardiana Library (at Florence) contains a more perfect copy made in the sixteenth century, probably soon after the year 1500, which contains many things omitted in the Vatican MS., among which may be mentioned the arts of working in glass and in mosaic. It is gratifying to learn that a second edition of this highly interesting work will probably be published at Florence, which will contain the new passages in the MS. of the Riccardiana, and which will be collated with both the Florentine MSS. It has been conjectured from the last words of the MS. of Cennini inthe Vatican, " Finito libro referamus gratia Christi 1437 a di 31 di luglio. Ex stincarum f.,"' that Cennini was an...