Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/274

266 was always of opinion that good antique statues were more perfect and displayed more beauty in the different parts than is exhibited by nature, which rarely assembles and unites every beauty in one single form, wherefore it becomes necessary to take one part from one and another part from another. He thought, moreover, that the muscles, veins, nerves, and other minute particulars were more distinctly marked and more clearly defined in statues than in nature, wherein the tenderness and softness of the flesh, concealing and covering a certain sharpness of outline, thus causes them to be less apparent. There is, without doubt, an exception, in the case of old and much attenuated forms, but these are avoided by artists from respect to other considerations. That Andrea was firmly wedded to his opinion is, indeed, obvious from his works, the manner of which is certainly somewhat hard, and not unfrequently recalls the idea of stone rather than of living flesh. But, be this as it may, in the last of the paintings above described he gave infinite satisfaction; and, among other figures, he there delineated that of Squarcione himself, a large corpulent man, having a spear in one hand and a sword in the other. In the same work he portrayed the Florentine Noferi, son of Messer Palla Strozzi, with Messer Girolamo della Valle, an eminent physician; Messer Bonifazio Fuzimeliga, doctor of laws; Niccolb, goldsmith to Pope Innocent VIIL, and Baldassane, da Leccio, all of whom were his intimate friends. These figures Mantegna clothed in glittering armour, shining and polished precisely as armour is in reality, and this picture is certainly in a very fine manner. The cavalier Messer Bonramino, is also among the portraits in this work, as is, moreover, a certain Hungarian Bishop, a man altogether witless, who went rambling about Rome all day, and at night would go to sleep in the stable with the beasts. In the same chapel Andrea likewise depicted Marsilio Pazzo in the figure of the executioner, who cuts off the head of