Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 06 (of 10): Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi — John Shaqi
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
Next, having been commissioned by the men who governed the Company of
the Angel Raphael to paint their chapel in the Church of S. Eufemia, he
executed therein two stories of the Angel Raphael in fresco, and in the
altar-piece, in oils, three large Angels, Raphael in the centre, and
Gabriel and Michael on either side, and all with good draughtsmanship
and colouring. He was reproached, indeed, for having made the legs of
those Angels too slender and wanting in softness; to which he made a
pleasant and gracious answer, saying that even as Angels were
represented with wings and with bodies, so to speak, celestial and
ethereal, as if they were birds, so it was only right to make their legs
lean and slender, to the end that they might fly and soar upwards with
greater ease. For that altar of the Church of S. Giorgio where there is
a Christ bearing His Cross, he painted S. Rocco and S. Sebastian, with
some scenes in the predella executed with very beautiful little figures.
And by order of the Company of the Madonna he painted on the predella of
the altar of that Company, in S. Bernardino, the Nativity of the Madonna
and the Massacre of the Innocents, with a great variety of attitudes in
the murderers and in the groups of children whom their mothers are
defending with all their might. This work is held in great veneration,
and is kept covered, the better to preserve it; and it was the reason
that the men of the Fraternity of S. Stefano commissioned him to paint
three pictures with similar figures for their altar in the old Duomo of
Verona, containing three little scenes from the life of Our Lady--her
Marriage, the Nativity of Christ, and the story of the Magi.
[Illustration: GIOVAN FRANCESCO CAROTO: ELISABETTA GONZAGA, DUCHESS OF
MANTUA
(_Florence: Uffizi, 1121. Panel_)]
After these works, thinking that he had gained enough credit in Verona,
Giovan Francesco was minded to depart and make trial of other places;
but his friends and relatives, pressing him much, persuaded him to
take to wife a young woman of noble birth, the daughter of Messer
Braliassarti Grandoni, whom he married in 1505. In a short time,
however, after he had had a son by her, she died in child-birth; and
Giovan Francesco, thus left free, departed from Verona and went off to
Milan, where Signor Anton Maria Visconti received him into his house and
caused him to execute many works for its adornment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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