Note 235 — BOOK I. (continued 5)

He was brother to Henry Hugford, a monk of Vallombrosa, to whom we owe, in a great measure, the progress of working in Scagliola, which was afterwards successfully practised in Florence by Lamberti Gori, his pupil; and at this day by the Signor Pietro Stoppioni, who receives numerous commissions. Although the portraits, and in general the figures, of a variety of colours, are very pleasing, yet the dicromi, or yellow figures upon a black ground, attract most notice, copied from ancient vases formerly called Etruscan, and these copies either form separate pictures, or are inserted for ornament in tablets. The tragic poet Alfieri caused his epitaph to be inscribed on one of these small tables covered with scagliola work. Being found after his death, it quickly spread abroad, but was not inscribed on his tomb. Upon another of these he had written the epitaph of a great personage, whom he wished to be interred near him; and the two little tablets united together folded one upon another in the way of a dittico or small altar, or of a book, on the side of which was written Alfieri liber novissimus. In this way others write, on tablets of scagliola, fine precepts from scripture, a philosophy that comes from and leads to heaven, intended to be placed in private sanctuaries, to aid meditation in sight of the crucifix. The silver tablets I have seen for the same purpose are more valuable, but less artificial.