The Well of Saint Clare

Cimabu? and Giotto, the young Buonamico Cristofani, the Florentine, surnamed Buffalmacco, abandoned the workshop of his master Andrea Tafi,

nt, and was the place of all others for a Painter to live in. Buffalmacco knew how to give his figures movement and expression; and, while far behind the divine Giotto for beauty of design, he pleased the eye by the gay exuberance of his inventions. So he was not lo

ough. He had a scaffolding erected in the Nunnery Church and on the still moist plaster began to paint, with wondrous vigour of execution, the history of Jesus Christ. First of all, to the right of the Altar, he illustrated the massacre of the Holy Innocents, and succeeded in expressing so vividly the grief and rage of the mothers trying vainly to save their little ones from the Roman soldiers' hands, that the very wall seemed to chant like the faithful in

e Painter. "Do take care the sol

uffalmacco

l I can. But these murderers are filled with so savag

ttle darling!..." he offered to make each

y!" they answere

an working without cloak or hood, and like a common labourer wearing only shirt and hose, she mistook him for some apprentice lad and did not condescend so much as to speak to him. She came again and again, fiv

d work himself at the pictures I commissioned him to paint. I mea

ing-man, and humbly answered Usimbalda, that he saw plain enough he was not of t

n; "and he will not fail to put hims

he corner where he had laid them, he pulled out his cloak and hat, which as it happened were in a very fair state of freshness, and put them on the lay figure he had improvised; next, he stuck a brush in the spout of

rry fellow they were accustomed to, a stately gentleman who held himself In the stiffest of at

eturned to the Church, was delighted to see

od ten minutes to paint figures that should be modest, noble and expre

cloak, brought crock, stool, hat, brush and all tumbling at her feet. Then, as she was by no means wanting in sense, she saw it was in

rucified Redeemer, the three Marys weeping at the foot of the Cross, Judas hanged on a tree, and a man blowing his