Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il SodomaVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il Sodoma
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
In like manner, he painted in fresco the facade of the house of a
merchant, which was a very beautiful work, on the road from S.
Maurizio to S. Moise; but the wind from the sea is little by little
destroying it. For Camillo Trevisani, at Murano, he painted a loggia
and an apartment in fresco, which were much extolled. And in S.
Giorgio Maggiore at Venice, at the head of a large apartment, he
painted in oils the Marriage of Cana in Galilee, which was a
marvellous work for its grandeur, the number of figures, the variety
of costumes, and the invention; and, if I remember right, there are to
be seen in it more than one hundred and fifty heads, all varied and
executed with great diligence.
The same Paolino was commissioned by the Procurators of S. Mark to
paint certain angular medallions that are in the ceiling of the Nicene
Library, which was left to the Signoria by Cardinal Bessarion, with a
vast treasure of Greek books. Now the above-named lords, when they had
the painting of that library begun, promised a prize of honour, in
addition to the ordinary payment, to him who should acquit himself
best in painting it; and the pictures were divided among the best
painters that there were at that time in Venice. When the work was
finished and the pictures painted had been very well considered, a
chain of gold was placed round the neck of Paolino, he being the man
who was judged to have done better than all the others. The picture
that gave him the victory and the prize of honour was that wherein he
painted Music, in which are depicted three very beautiful young women,
one of whom, the most beautiful, is playing a great bass-viol, looking
down at the fingerboard of the instrument, the attitude of her person
showing that her ear and her voice are fixed intently on the sound;
and of the other two, one is playing a lute, and the other singing
from a book. Near these women is a Cupid without wings, who is playing
a harpsichord, signifying that Love is born from Music, or rather,
that Love is always in company with Music; and, because he never parts
from her, Paolino made him without wings. In the same picture he
painted Pan, the God, according to the poets, of shepherds, with
certain pipes made of the bark of trees, as it were consecrated to him
as votive offerings by shepherds who have been victorious in playing
them. Two other pictures Paolino painted in the same place; in one is
Arithmetic, with certain Philosophers dressed in the ancient manner,
and in the other is Honour, seated on a throne, to whom sacrifices are
being offered and royal crowns presented. But, seeing that this young
man is at this very moment at the height of his activity and not yet
in his thirty-second year, I shall say nothing more of him for the
present.
[Illustration: VENICE ENTHRONED, WITH JUSTICE AND PEACE
(_After the painting by =Paolo Veronese [Paolino _or_ Caliari]=. Venice:
Ducal Palace_)
_Anderson_]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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