A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
History
A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools: Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin
National Gallery (Great Britain); Painting -- England -- London -- Catalogs
sold his labour to a dealer, from early in the morning to four
in the afternoon, for ten florins a day. His wife, it appears,
kept the purse, and is said to have doled out very scanty
supplies--a precaution which was perhaps necessary, as Berchem
had a weakness for Italian drawings, his collection of which
sold at his death for 12,800 florins.
81. THE VISION OF ST. AUGUSTINE.
_Garofalo_ (Ferrarese: 1481-1559).
Benvenuto Tisio, called Garofalo[91] from the village of
that name on the Po to which his family belonged, was (like
Sodoma) the son of a shoemaker, and having shown a strong taste
for art, was apprenticed as a lad to the Ferrarese painter,
Domenico Panetti. Seven years later he went to Cremona and
attached himself to Boccaccino (806). He left Cremona suddenly,
as described in a letter, still extant, from Boccaccino to
Garofalo's father: "Had your son," he writes, "learnt good
manners as thoroughly as he has learnt painting, he would
scarcely have played me such a shabby trick. He has taken
himself off, I know not whither, and without a word. But this
may be a clue to his whereabouts, that he said, if he is to be
believed, that he would see Rome." From Rome he returned to
Ferrara, where he formed a warm friendship with the brothers
Dossi. In 1509 he was again in Rome, where he saw and admired
Michael Angelo's frescoes in the Sixtine Chapel in all the
splendour of their freshness. He also greatly admired the work
of Raphael; "and displayed," says Vasari, "so much diffidence
as well as courtesy that he became the friend of Raphael, who,
kind and obliging as he was, assisted and favoured Benvenuto
much, teaching him many things." In 1511 Benvenuto was at
Mantua, but in the following year he returned to Ferrara,
which remained his home for the rest of his life. There, says
Vasari, who was entertained by him, he lived a particularly
happy and busy life, being "cheerful of disposition, mild in
his converse, warmly attached to his friends, beyond measure
affectionate and devoted, and always supporting the trials of
his life with patient resignation." These trials were very
heavy, for soon after he was forty he lost the sight of one
eye; "nor was he without fear and much danger of losing the
other. He then recommended himself to God, and made a vow to
wear grey clothing ever after, as, in fact, he did, when by
the grace of God the sight of the left eye was preserved to
him so perfectly that the works executed by Garofalo in his
sixty-fifth year are so well done, so delicately finished,
and evince so much care, that they are truly wonderful." For
the last nine years of his life he was totally blind, in
which affliction he solaced himself by cultivating music.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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