Giorgio Vasari

“ The good fortune of Andrea was really great—to be born in an age which, doing all things in the rudest manner, could value so highly the works of an artist who really merited so little, not to say nothing. ”

“ But Andrea, certainly not considering himself to be the most excellent artist in the world, and reflecting on the durability of works in Mosaic, left Florence and betook himself to Venice, where certain Greek painters were then working in Mosaic in the church of St. Mark. Forming a close intimacy with these artists, Andrea Tafi so contrived, that by promises, money, and entreaties, he at length prevailed on one of them. Maestro Apollonius, a Greek painter, to accompany him to Florence, here Andrea learned from him to fuse the glass, and prepare the cement used in mosaic. ”

“ Commencing from this point, artists then began, by degrees, to follow the guidance of the better masters, and happily surpassing each other more and more from day to day, they have thus brought the arts from such mean condition to the summit of that perfection to which we now see them exalted. Andrea Tafi lived to the age of eighty-one, and died before Cimabue, in the year 1294. ”