Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the FlemingsVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the Flemings
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
In another picture, nine braccia in height and twelve in length, which
was opposite to the Chapel of the Sacrament, Bernardo Timante
Buontalenti, a painter much beloved and favoured by the most
illustrious Prince, had figured with most beautiful invention the
Rivers of the three principal parts of the world, come, as it were,
all grieving and sorrowful, to lament with Arno on their common loss
and to console him; and these Rivers were the Nile, the Ganges, and
the Po. The Nile had as a symbol a crocodile, and, to signify the
fertility of his country, a garland of ears of corn; the Ganges, a
gryphon-bird and a chaplet of gems; the Po, a swan and a crown of
black amber. These Rivers, having been conducted into Tuscany by the
Fame, who was to be seen on high, as it were in flight, were standing
round Arno, who was crowned with cypress and held his vase, drained
empty, uplifted with one hand, and in the other a branch of cypress,
and beneath him was a lion. And, to signify that the soul of
Michelagnolo had flown to the highest felicity in Heaven, the
judicious painter had depicted in the air a Splendour representing the
celestial light, towards which the blessed soul, in the form of a
little Angel, was winging its way; with this lyric verse:
VIVENS ORBE PETO LAUDIBUS ÆTHERA.
At the sides, upon two bases, were two figures in the act of holding
open a curtain within which, so it appeared, were the above-named
Rivers, the soul of Michelagnolo, and the Fame; and each of those two
figures had another beneath it. That which was on the right hand of
the Rivers, representing Vulcan, had a torch in the hand; and the
figure representing Hatred, which had the neck under Vulcan's feet in
an attitude of great constraint, and as it were struggling to writhe
free, had as symbol a vulture, with this verse:
SURGERE QUID PROPERAS ODIUM CRUDELE? JACETO.
And that because things superhuman, and almost divine, should in no
way be regarded with envy or hatred. The other, representing Aglaia,
one of the Three Graces and wife of Vulcan, to signify Proportion, had
in her hand a lily, both because flowers are dedicated to the Graces,
and also because the lily is held to be not inappropriate to the rites
of death. The figure which was lying beneath Aglaia, and which was
painted to represent Disproportion, had as symbol a monkey, or rather,
ape, and above her this verse:
VIVUS ET EXTINCTUS DOCUIT SIC STERNERE TURPE.
And under the Rivers were these two other verses:
VENIMUS, ARNE, TUO CONFIXA IN VULNERE MOESTA
FLUMINA, UT EREPTUM MUNDO PLOREMUS HONOREM.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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