Chap. VII. GADDO GADDI. 229 have the character and faults of that work, and it is by no means impossible that this artist should have been one of those who resumed at Assisi the labours which Cimabue had not completed. Gaddo Gaddi was, according to Vasari's biography, the intimate friend and cotemporary of Cimabue. A pleasing conformity of mind and thought united them, 1 and hence it would have been agreable to them to labour together in one edifice like that of Assisi. But the talents of Gaddi were evidently inferior to those of his friend, and Vasari does not hesitate to place him, though an older man, in the second rank of those who illustrated the Flo rentine school. Born in 1239,* he survived Cimabue twelve years, after laying the foundation of a fortune which raised his posterity to the highest social position attainable in those days. With Giotto he lived also on terms of friendship, and his son Taddeo, held by the former at the baptismal font, 3 became one of the most industrious of the great Florentine’s assistants and imi tators. A single date, not a single record of undoubted authority connects the name of Gaddo with works of art. The silence of Richa 4 would seem to contradict the asser tion, that from Tafi Gaddo learnt the art of mosaic, and that he executed the figures of prophets in the course beneath the windows in the baptistery of S. Giovanni at Florence, winning by his industry “a great renown”; 5 but if the mosaic inside and above the portal of S. Maria del Fiore at Florence be really his work, as Vasari »lo not protrude too much. The 4 angels have some nature in movement, and some greater breadth of drapery than hereto fore. The figures of apostles are not quite so motionless as those of Jacopo Torriti, and the colours are well chosen. This mosaic is on gold ground and not free from restoring. 1 Vasari, Vol. I. p. 293. 2 He died, according to Vasari, in 1312, aged 73. Vas. Vol. I. p. 296. and Richa, Chiese, ub. sup., states that he had seen the record of his burial in S. Croce. Vol. I. p. 56. 8 Vas. Vol. I. p. 296. 4 Chiese Florentine, tom. V. p. XLH. Richa does not mention the name of Gaddi amongst the mo- saists of the baptisteryofFlorence, although he records that of Taddeo. 5 Vasari, Vol. I. p. 294.