Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 05 (of 10): Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo LottoVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 05 (of 10): Andrea da Fiesole to Lorenzo Lotto
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
him or after his design, for he always stayed such a short time in any
one place, that he could never bring anything to completion; wherefore
he consumed all his time with designs, measurements, models, and
caprices. Nevertheless, as a follower of our arts, he has deserved to
have record made of him.
Baldassarre drew very well in every manner, with great judgment and
diligence, but more with the pen, in water-colours, and in chiaroscuro,
than in any other way, as may be seen from many drawings by his hand
that belong to different craftsmen. Our book, in particular, contains
various drawings; and in one of these is a scene full of invention and
caprice, showing a piazza filled with arches, colossal figures,
theatres, obelisks, pyramids, temples of various kinds, porticoes, and
other things, all after the antique, while on a pedestal stands a
Mercury, round whom are all sorts of alchemists with bellows large and
small, retorts, and other instruments for distilling, hurrying about and
giving him a clyster in order to purge his body--an invention as
ludicrous as it is beautiful and bizarre.
Friends and intimate companions of Baldassarre, who was always
courteous, modest, and gentle with every man, were Domenico Beccafumi of
Siena, an excellent painter, and Il Capanna, who, in addition to many
other works that he painted in Siena, executed the facade of the house
of the Turchi and another that is on the Piazza.
GIOVAN FRANCESCO PENNI OF FLORENCE AND PELLEGRINO DA MODENA
LIVES OF GIOVAN FRANCESCO PENNI OF FLORENCE
[_CALLED IL FATTORE_]
AND OF PELLEGRINO DA MODENA
PAINTERS
Giovan Francesco Penni, called Il Fattore, a painter of Florence, was no
less indebted to Fortune than he was to the goodness of his own nature,
in that his ways of life, his inclination for painting, and his other
qualities brought it about that Raffaello da Urbino took him into his
house and educated him together with Giulio Romano, looking on both of
them ever afterwards as his children, and proving at his death how much
he thought both of the one and of the other by leaving them heirs to his
art and to his property alike. Now Giovan Francesco, who began from his
boyhood, when he first entered the house of Raffaello, to be called Il
Fattore, and always retained that name, imitated in his drawings the
manner of Raffaello, and never ceased to follow it, as may be perceived
from some drawings by his hand that are in our book. And it is nothing
wonderful that there should be many of these to be seen, all finished
with great diligence, because he delighted much more in drawing than in
colouring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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