About the same time, which was the year 1538, Francesco Salviati, having painted a scene in fresco in the Company of the Misericordia, was to give it the final completion and to set his hand to others, which many private citizens desired to have painted; but, by reason of the rivalry that there was between him and Jacopo del Conte, nothing more was done; which hearing, Battista sought to obtain by this means an opportunity to prove himself superior to Francesco and the best master in Rome; and he so went to work, employing his friends and other means, that Monsignor della Casa, after seeing a design by his hand, allotted the work to him. Thereupon, setting his hand to it, he painted there in fresco S. John the Baptist taken at the command of Herod and cast into prison. But, although this picture was executed with much labour, it was not held to be equal by a great measure to that of Salviati, from its having been painted with very great effort and in a manner crude and melancholy, while it had no order in the composition, nor in a single part any of that grace and charm of colouring which Francesco's work possessed. And from this it may be concluded that those men are deceived who, in pursuing this art, give all their attention to executing well and with a good knowledge of muscles a torso, an arm, a leg, or other member, believing that a good grasp of that part is the whole secret; for the reason that the part of a work is not the whole, and only he carries it to perfect completion, in a good and beautiful manner, who, after executing the parts well, knows how to make them fit in due proportion into the whole, and who, moreover, so contrives that the composition of the figures expresses and produces well and without confusion the effect that it should produce. And, above all, care must be taken to make the heads vivacious, spirited, gracious, and beautiful in the expressions, the manner not crude, and the nudes so tinted with black that they may have relief, melting gradually into the distance according as may be required; to say nothing of the perspective-views, landscapes, and other parts that good pictures demand, nor that in making use of the works of others a man should proceed in such a manner that this may not be too easily recognized. Battista thus became aware too late that he had wasted time beyond all reason over the minutiae of muscles and over drawing with too great diligence, while paying no attention to the other fields of art. [Illustration: TINTORETTO: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE (_Venice: Doge's Palace, Salon Anticollegio. Canvas_)]