Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/160

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Some time before the death of Lorenzo Costa, his disciple. Ercole Ferrarese, had attained considerable reputation, and had been invited to many places to exercise his calling; he would, however, not consent to abandon his master (a thing that happens but very rarely), and preferred remaining with him, making inferior gains, and, receiving a smaller amount of praise, to working alone with higher credit and larger profits. This gratitude on the part of Ercole deserves all the more commendation for the rarity with which it is found among men; but he, knowing himself to be indebted to Lorenzo, postponed all thought of fiis own interest to consideration for his master, towards whom he conducted himself as a brother or son, even to the extremity of his life.

The drawing of Ercole being superior to that of Costa, the former painted certain stories in tempera,—the figures of which are small,—beneath the painting executed by Lorenzo, for the chapel of San Vincenzio, in the church of San Petronio, and these are so well done, they exhibit a manner so good and so beautiful, that it is not possible to see anything better, nor even to imagine the amount of care and labour bestowed by Ercole on that work. The Predella, therefore, is a much better performance than the picture, although both were executed at the same time, during the life of Costa. After the death of the latter, Ercole was appointed by Domenico Garganelli to finish the chapel in San Petronio, which, as we have before related, Lorenzo had begun, but had completed only a small part of it. For this