text:  We grieve to add that the work was written in prison dated from the Stinche in Florence at eighty years of age and in extreme poverty; a proof among many that the patronage of the arts in those days was not a mantle of charity of adequate dimensions to cover the wants of the numerous professors of the art; while it tells somewhat unfavourably for the gratitude of the contemporary world to know that the one work alone of this deserted old man the Virgin in the Hospital of Bonifacio Lupi (so well coloured says Vasari that it is to this day in good preservation ) would produce a sum that would probably not only be sufficient to have paid his debts but to have equalled the wants of no small portion of his prolonged life