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Updated: June 12, 2025
One of them, Apollonius, became attached to Tafi, and this is how he came to accompany him to Florence. The work on the Baptistery was done actually in situ, every cube being set directly in the plaster. The work is still extant, and the technical and constructive features are perfect, since their restoration.
Lives of the most Excellent Painters, by Giorgio Vasari. “Life of Spinello.” Andrea Tafi, painter and worker-in-mosaic of Florence, had a wholesome terror of the Devils of Hell, particularly in the watches of the night, when it is given to the powers of Darkness to prevail.
They did as he asked, and never left him till they had pretty well scarified every bit of skin off the old fellow's back and loins. The good lads made it their first business to sow the story broadcast through the city. This they did to such good effect that there was not man, woman nor child in Florence could look Master Andrea Tafi in the face without bursting out laughing.
They commenced the apse at Pisa, which was finished in 1321 by Vicini, Cimabue designing the colossal figure of Christ which thus dominates the cathedral. Vasari says that Andrea Tafi was considered "an excellent, nay, a divine artist" in his specialty. Andrea, himself more modest, visited Venice, and deigned to take instruction from Greek mosaic workers, who were employed at St. Mark's.
This was exactly what Buffalmacco expected, and directly he heard the clatter of his master's footsteps on the stairs, he turned his nose to the wall and pretended to be fast asleep. And there was old Tafi shouting up the stairs: "Hilloa! but you're a grand sleeper.
It is amusing to read Vasari's patronizing account of Tafi; from the late Renaissance point of view, the mosaic worker seemed to be a barbarous Goth at best: "The good fortune of Andrea was really great," says Vasari, "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!"
Apollonius was mixing the cement with bitumen and chopped straw, pronouncing words of might known only to himself; while Bruno and Buffalmacco were picking the little cubes of stone to be used, and Tafi arranging them according to the sketch he had made on a slab of slate he held in his hand.
Meanwhile the canopy of the bed was all but touching the beams of the roofing, and Tafi was crying in desperation: "Jesus, unless you stop your Blessed Mother this instant, the roof of my house, which cost a fine penny, will most certainly be burst up. For I see for sure I'm going slap through it. Stop! stop! I can hear the tiles cracking."
The task occupied him all day, and when old Tafi came back from San Giovanni, he could not refrain from bestowing a few words of commendation on his pupil. This cost him no small effort, for age and riches had made him both cross and critical. "My lads," he said, addressing the apprentices, "those wings are painted with a good deal of spirit.
The three friends, having nothing now to keep them awake, fell asleep under the moon, which looking in at the garret window, pointed the tip of one of her horns, as if in mockery, at old Tafi. They slept sound till daybreak, when the master began hammering on the partition, and called out, coughing and spitting as usual. "Get up, master Apollonius! Up with you, apprentices!
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