Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/346

338 give him tlie commission for a picture in tempera, containing numerous figures, to be placed in the chapel of Sant’ Amhrogio, which belonged to the Friars-Minors. For the Altar of the Resurrection of Christ in the church of Sant’ Antonio, this master depicted the appearance of the Saviour to Mary Magdalen, and the other Maries, with the perspective view of a distant landscape, which diminishes very finely. In another chapel Vittore painted the History of the Martyrs, their crucifixion that is to say, and in this work there are more than three hundred figures large and small, with many horses and numerous trees; the opening heavens, the various attitudes of the figures, clothed and nude, the many foreshortenings, and the multitude of other objects represented in this painting, prove that the master could not have executed his work but with extraordinary labour and care. For the altar of Our Lady in the church of St. Job, in Canareio, Vittore painted the Madonna presenting the infant Christ to Simeon; the Virgin is depicted as standing upright, and Simeon, in the Cope or Pluvial, is placed between two ministering priests, who are clothed as cardinals; behind the Virgin are two women, one of whom holds a pair of doves, and beneath are three boys sounding musical instruments, the first a lute, the second a wind instrument of a spiral form, and the third a lyre or kind of viol; the colouring of all this picture is exceedingly pleasing and graceful. Vittore was without doubt a very diligent and able master; many of the pictures executed by him in Venice and other places, with numerous portraits from the life by his hand are held in great esteem as works of that time. Scarpaccia taught his art to two of his brothers, both of whom imitated