Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/309

Rh Bologna, this master painted two pictures, which were very carefully executed, and for the Misericordia, outside the gate of Strà Castione; he also painted one, at the request of a lady of the Manzuoli family: in this he depicted Our Lady with the Child in her arms, San Giorgio, San Giovanni Batista, San Stefano, and Sant’ Agostino, with an angel beneath: the hands of the last mentioned are folded in an attitude of so much grace that he seems, indeed, to belong to Paradise. For the Brotherhood of San Francesco, in the same city, Francia painted a picture, as he also did one for the Brotherhood of San Girolamo. This master lived in close intimacy with Messer Polo Zambeccaro, and, for the sake of that friendship, the latter requested him, as a memorial of himself, to paint a tolerably large picture representing the Birth of Christ: this work was much extolled, and is among the most celebrated of his performances, for which cause Messer Polo commissioned him to paint two hgures in fresco, at his villa, and these also are exceedingly beautiful. Another admirable work in fresco was executed by Francia in the Palace of Messer Geronimo Bolognino: it comprises many varied and beautiful figures, and all these things had obtained for the master so extraordinary a degree of reverence in that city that he was held to be a kind of god,