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
The same master painted a picture of S. Sebastian, which was afterwards
placed in the Madonna delle Grazie, without the city of Mantua; and to
this he devoted extraordinary pains, copying many things in it from the
life. It is related that the Marquis, going one day, while Francesco was
executing this picture, to see him at work, as he used often to do, said
to him: "Francesco, you must take some fine figure as your model in
painting this Saint." To which Francesco answered: "I am using as my
model a porter with a very handsome figure, whom I bind in a fashion of
my own in order to make the work natural." "But the limbs of this Saint
of yours," rejoined the Marquis, "are not true to life, for they have
not the appearance of being strained by force or by that fear which one
would expect in a man bound and shot with arrows; and by your leave I
will undertake to show you what you ought to do in order to make this
figure perfect." "Nay, but I beg you to do it, my lord," said Francesco;
and the Marquis added: "When you have your porter bound here, send for
me, and I will show you what you must do." The next day, therefore, when
Francesco had the porter bound in the manner that he wished, he sent a
secret summons to the Marquis, but without knowing what he intended to
do. And the Marquis, bursting out of a neighbouring room in a great
fury, with a loaded cross-bow in his hand, rushed towards the porter,
crying out at the top of his voice, "Traitor, prepare to die! At last I
have caught thee as I would have thee," and other suchlike words; which
hearing, the wretched porter, thinking himself as good as dead,
struggled in a frenzy of terror with the ropes wherewith he was bound,
and made frantic efforts to break them, thus truly representing one
about to be shot with arrows, and revealing fear in his face and the
horror of death in his strained and distorted limbs, as he sought to
escape from his peril. This done, the Marquis said to Francesco, "There
he is in the state that he ought to be: the rest is for you to do";
which the painter having well considered, made his figure as perfect as
could be imagined.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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