His triumph in oil is the altar-piece of St. John preaching in a chapel of the Certosa at Bologna, whose lights seem embrowned by a golden veil, and the shadowy gleam of Valombrosa; though he sometimes indulged in tones austere, pronounced, and hardy: such is the Flagellation of Christ in the same church, whose tremendous depth of flesh-tints contrasts the open wide-expanded sky, and less conveys than dashes its terrors on the astonished sense. FOOTNOTES: [154] Mantoua preserved a certain attachment to Virgil in the darkest ages; for besides numerous coins stamped with his image, his statue, honoured by annual festivals, remained in the forum, till the brutal fanaticism of Carlo Malatesta condemned it to the river. Vide _Ant. Possevini Junioris Gonzaga_, lib. v. p. 486. Paul of Florence and Peter Paul Vergerius wrote against Malatesta: the latter under the following title, 'De Diruta Statua Virgilii P.P.V. eloquentissimi Oratoris epistola ex tugurio Blondi sub Apolline.' No date. [155] Some codices decorated with miniatures and the portrait of that Countess: the most conspicuous of which is that by Donizone, a Benedictine at Canossa, in the diocese of Reggio, but a German by extraction, who lived at the court of Mathilda, and in two books of barbarous verse composed her life and history. It is preserved in the Vatican Library, No. 4922, and was first published by Sebastian Tagnagolio, at Ingolstadt, 1612. 4to. The original portrait of Mathilda, by an unknown hand, drawn from her monument at Polirone, has been published by _J. Bat. Visi in Notizie Storiche della città di Mantoua e dello stato_, t. ii. p. 122. She is represented on a horse with a pomegranate in her hand. [156] In the Convent "alle Grazie," tradition dates the remains of several old pictures from the time of Mantegna. That miniature or rather missal painting had attained a high degree of excellence at that period, is proved by a large folio Bible, in the Estensian Library, decorated with admirable copies of insects, plants, and animals. The contract made between Duca Borso, 1455, and the two artists who painted it, Taddeo de Crivelli and Zuanne de Russi da Mantova, has been preserved by Bettshelli, Lett. Mant. Mantova, 1774. 4to. [157] Vasari, whom rage of dispatch and eager credulity seldom suffered to wait for authentic information, not content, in spite of his epitaph, to tell us that he was born of low parents in some district of Mantoua, confounds the date of his death with that of the inscription itself. [158] See Nic. Vleughels, in his notes to Dolci. [159] Garofalo. [160] Cataloghi, p. 498. [161] Indice del Pam. de' Pittori, p. 21. [162] ----"περὶ χερσὶ δὲ δεσμὸν ἴηλα Χρύσεον, ἄῤῥηκτον."--Ilias, xv. 19. [163] Du Change. Copy of the Leda in the Colonna. [164] In the palace Godolphin.