Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/25

Rh been painted by Bramantino, an excellent master of that time.

And as I cannot write the life, nor particularize the works of this painter, because the latter have been destroyed, I will not refuse the labour of inserting a slight notice as a memorial of him, since the occasion appears opportune for doing so. In the works destroyed, as has just been related, this artist had produced, as I have heard say, certain heads from nature so beautiful and so perfectly executed, that the power of speech alone was required to give them life. Many of these portraits became well known from the circumstance that Raphael caused them to be copied, to the end that he might possess the likenesses of the persons represented, who were all great personages. Among them were Niccolo Fortebraccio, Charles VII., King of France, Antonio Colonna, Prince of Salerno, Francesco Carmignuola, Giovanni Vitellesco, Cardinal Bessarion, Franceso Spinola and Battista da Canneto. These portraits were all presented by Giulio Romano, disciple and heir of Raffaello da Urbino, to Giovio, who deposited them in his museum at Como. In Milan, over the door of San Sepolcro, I have seen a Dead Christ by the hand of this master, which is so judiciously executed in foreshortening, that although the picture is not more than one braccio high, the whole length of the body is shown in a manner that must have been impossible but for the judgment and ability of the master. In the same city are other works by the same artist: as, for example, certain apartments and loggie, or galleries, in the house of the Marchese Ostanesia, wherein are many paintings executed by him with great ability, and much evidence of power in the foreshortening of the figures. Without the Porta Vercellina, and near the castle, Bramantino painted several grooms currying horses, in a stable which has since been entirely demolished; the pictures are consequently lost, and this is the more to be regretted as one of these horses is declared to have been so life-like that a living horse mistook it for reality and kicked it repeatedly.

But to return to Piero della Francesca: when he had completed his work in Rome he returned to Borgo, where