Giorgio Vasari

“ In like manner, the miracles performed by Ranieri, as he was borne to his tomb in the cathedral, and those which he worked after having been laid within the sepulchre, have been delineated by Antonio with infinite care and devotion. The painter has here represented men receiving their sight, the lame restored to the use of their limbs, and those possessed by demons set free, with many other miracles, all expressed with extraordinary animation. ”

“ In the same place, and beneath the Lives of the Holy Fathers, painted by Pietro Laurati of Siena, Antonio depicted the body of the Beato Oliverio, and that of the Abate Panunzio, [15] with various events from their lives, on a sarcophagus which is intended to represent marble. This painting is also extremely well done; indeed, all the works executed by Antonio in the Campo Santo are such, that they have been universally, and with great justice, acknowledged to be the best of all the various productions executed in that place, during so long a series of years, by so many excellent masters. ”

“ And herein they may serve as a lesson to artists, teaching them the great injury done to fresco paintings by retouching them with other colours when they are dry. For we find it proved, beyond a doubt, that the pictures, so retouched, acquire a look of age, and are yet deprived of all the purifying effects of time ”

“ Nor, in truth, can any one behold without astonishment the priests who bear the body of the saint to the cathedral: they are singing, and in all their attitudes, gestures, and the movement of their persons, represent a company of choristers with extraordinary truth and reality. [12] In this picture there is said to be the portrait of the Bavarian. ”

“ But, among all these figures, none surprises more, or merits more attention, than that of one suffering from hydropsia; the haggard visage, the shrivelled lips, the swollen body, all are so lifelike, that the devouring thirst caused by dropsy, and the other characteristics of that malady, could scarcely be more vividly displayed in the living body itself. ”

“ Nay, they sometimes labour all the more earnestly for distinction, to the end that they may thus in a certain sort take vengeance on those by whom they have been outraged, and not unfrequently become great men by these means, when, had they remained quietly in their native land, they might perchance hare attained little beyond mediocrity in the vocation of their choice. ”