This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1902 edition. Excerpt: ...taste in horseflesh, and a prince of jesters to whom a practical joke was dearer than reputation or personal safety. What a Wellspring of joy to the gilded youth of Siena was this frolicsome gossip, who would lay down his brush to finger the lute or grasp the bridle, and who could paint you the suavest Madonna in a studio full of roistering sparks. Imagine the decorous and laborious Vasari visiting such a lawless household, and the continual shocks to which his bourgeois susceptibilities nrust have been subjected. His animosity to Bazzi is almost accounted for by the mere difference of temperament in the two men. How could the " most noble art of design " be worthily practised by a freakish fellow who made friends and comrades of beasts, and who owned a familiar raven which, to the mystification and annoyance of dignified persons from Florence, could exactly counterfeit his master's voice? And was not Bazzi's explanation, that he kept the bird by him in order that it "might teach a theological jackass how to speak," an aggravation of his offence? Could sound painting be reasonably expected from a pretentious dauber who bought fast horses like a noble, and who had the impudence to win the race of Saint Barnaba in Florence over the heads of F lorentines, biped and quadruped? It would seem that effrontery could not go farther, but Sodoma had found the means of gilding the refined gold of his iniquity by insulting the Signory as well. Messer Giorgio was constitutionally incapable of sympathizing with a reckless wag who joyed in carrying a jest beyond the bounds of propriety, and who was no respecter of persons. Bazzi has paid dearly for his mocking humor, or rather, his lawless indulgence of it....

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