Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo SoggiVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Fra Giocondo was a man of saintly and most upright life, much beloved by
all the great men of letters of his age, and in particular by Domizio
Calderino, Matteo Bosso, and Paolo Emilio, the writer of the History of
France, all three his compatriots. Very much his friends, likewise, were
Sannazzaro, Bude, and Aldus Manutius, with all the Academy of Rome; and
he had a disciple in Julius Caesar Scaliger, one of the most learned men
of our times. Finally, being very old, he died, but precisely at what
time and in what place this happened, and consequently where he was
buried, is not known.
Even as it is true that the city of Verona is very similar to Florence
in situation, manners, and other respects, so it is also true that in
the first as well as in the second there have always flourished men of
the finest genius in all the noblest and most honourable professions.
Saying nothing of the learned, for with them I have nothing to do here,
and continuing to speak of the men of our arts, who have always had an
honourable abode in that most noble city, I come to Liberale of Verona,
a disciple of Vincenzio di Stefano, a native of the same city, already
mentioned in another place, who executed for the Church of Ognissanti,
belonging to the Monks of S. Benedict, at Mantua, in the year 1463, a
Madonna that was a very praiseworthy example of the work of those times.
Liberale imitated the manner of Jacopo Bellini, for when a young man,
while the said Jacopo was painting the Chapel of S. Niccolo at Verona,
he gave his attention under Bellini to the studies of design in such
thorough fashion that, forgetting all that he had learned from Vincenzio
di Stefano, he acquired the manner of Bellini and retained it ever
after.
The first paintings of Liberale were in the Chapel of the Monte della
Pieta in S. Bernardino, in his native city; and there, in the principal
picture, he painted a Deposition from the Cross, with certain Angels,
some of whom have in their hands the Mysteries (for so they are called)
of the Passion, and all with their weeping faces show grief at the Death
of the Saviour. Very natural, in truth, are these figures, as are other
works of the same kind by this master, who strove to show in many places
that he was able to paint weeping countenances. This may also be seen in
S. Anastasia, a church of Friars of S. Dominic, likewise in Verona,
where he painted a Dead Christ with the Maries mourning for Him on the
pediment of the Chapel of the Buonaveri; and he executed many pictures
in the same manner of painting as the work mentioned above, which are
dispersed among the houses of various gentlemen in Verona.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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