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For some reason or other this chapel at one time ceased to be used, the door was walled up and the very existence of the place was forgotten. In the last century Bottari, having read about it in Vasari, set to work to find it, and at last got into it through the window which looks upon the roof of the Sixtine Chapel.
We shall rather call the attention of the Christian antiquarian to the numerous frescoes painted in the chapels of the catacombs, and illustrated by Bosio, Bottari, d'Agincourt etc., the latter of whom attributes some of them to the second century on account of the similarity of their style to that of frescoes in the tomb of the Nasones, which is situated on the Flaminian way at a short distance from Rome; his opinion is confirmed by the fact that some of them have been broken through, with the view of preparing a place of burial for the bodies of martyrs slain in subsequent persecutions.
Boldetti in his Cemeterii de' martiri notices the short columns supporting small vases, in corners of the chapels in the catacombs; and Bottari has published and illustrated in his Roma sotterranea an interesting fresco discovered in the catacombs of S. Agnese, and representing five figures carrying vessels closely resembling those still used for holy water; four of those figures carry branches supposed to be of the palm-tree: the fifth holds an aspergillum with which holy water is still sprinkled.
It is an apotheosis of the Madonna, with four figures beneath S. John Baptist, Mary Magdalen, S. Sebastian, and S. Rocco; not S. Onofrio, as Bottari has named it. The predella, now lost, had portraits of the patron and his wife. Crowe and Cavalcaselle speak of six saints in this picture, four standing and two kneeling.
Bottari says, that Buonamico, on one occasion, was surprised by the nuns, while drinking the Vernaccia, when he instantly spirted what he had in his mouth on the picture, whereby they were fully satisfied; if they cut short his supply, his pictures looked pale and lifeless, but the Vernaccia always restored them to warmth and beauty.
But a treasure of this kind, peculiarly interesting to the artist, has appeared in mere recent times, in seven quarto volumes, consisting of the original letters of the great painters, from the golden age of Leo X., gradually collected by BOTTARI, who published them in separate volumes.
The world is apt to term such men enthusiasts, madmen, or fools, till their glorious achievements stamp them almost divinely inspired. Brunelleschi was nobly descended on his mother's side, she being a member of the Spini family, which, according to Bottari, became extinct towards the middle of the last century.
Bishop Giuseppe Maria Bottari, the last restorer, used so many inscribed slabs in repairing the interior and building the campanile that he was nicknamed "the sexton of inscriptions." There was a cruciform baptistery to the west, the remains of which were destroyed in 1850 in connection with the harbour works.
Go! and the Lord be with you." Donatello died on the 13th of December, 1466. Bottari observes that another reason for his choice of San Lorenzo, may have been that many of his works were in that church.
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