Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/289

Rh this is more particularly manifest in the face of a priest or philosopher, for he may he either, who stands near, in the very extremity of astonishment: he is dressed after the antique, and bears a vase in his hands. In the same story, moreover, and among the numerous figures of women, variously apparelled, is a boy, who, terrified by the attack of a little red and white spaniel, which has seized him by his tunic, turns round to the mother, and, hiding himself among the folds of her garments, seems as entirely possessed by his fear of being bitten by the dog, as the woman is with her amazement, and a sort of dread and horror, as she witnesses the resurrection of Drusiana. Near this, and where San Giovanni is seen boiled in oil, the expression of rage in the countenance of the judge, who commands that the fire shall be increased, is rendered with extraordinary power; the reflection of the flames on the face of him who blows the fire is also fine, and all the figures are painted in varied and beautiful attitudes. On the opposite side is represented San Filippo in the Temple of Mars, causing to come forth from beneath the altar the Serpent, which has killed the son of the king by the foetid odours emitted from it. The master here painted, on one of the steps of the altar, a cleft, through which the serpent crawls from beneath it, and the fracture thus depicted is so natural, that one evening a scholar of Filippo, desiring to hide something, I know not what, that it might not be seen by some one who was knocking at the door, ran in haste to this hole to conceal what he held within it, but was foiled of his purpose. Filippo displayed equal art in the Serpent itself, insomuch that the venom, the foetid breath, and the fire, seem rather to be real than merely painted. The invention of the picture, in which the saint is crucified, has also been much commended; the artist would seem to have figured to himself that San Filippo had been fastened to the cross while it lay extended on the earth, and to have been then raised and dragged aloft by means of ropes, cords, and stakes; these ropes being carried around the fragments of old buildings, as pillars, basements, and the