Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/408

400 work was subsequently placed in the church of San Rocco, where it is held in the highest veneration by many of the faithful, and even performs miracles, as is frequently seen. This master laboured in many parts of Italy, as, for example, at Castelfranco and in March of Treviso. He executed numerous portraits for different Italian Princes, and many of his works were sent beyond the confines of Italy, as specimens worthy to bear testimony to the fact that, if Tuscany abounded at all times in masters of eminence, neither were the districts beyond the mountains altogether abandoned or wholly forgotten by Heaven. It is related that Giorgione, being in conversation with certain sculptors, at the time when Andrea del Verrocchio was engaged with his bronze horse, these artists maintained that, since Sculpture was capable of exhibiting various aspects in one sole figure, from the fact that the spectator can walk round it, so it must, on this account, be acknowledged to surpass painting, which could not do more than display a given figure in one particular aspect. Giorgione, on the contrary, was of opinion that in one picture the painter could display various aspects without the necessity of walking round his work, and could even display, at one glance, all the different aspects that could be presented by the figure of a man, even though the latter should assume several attitudes, a thing which could not be accomplished by sculpture without compelling the observer to change his place, so that the work is not presented at one view, but at different views. He declared, further, that he could execute a single figure in painting, in such a manner as to show the front, back, and profiles of both sides at one and the same time. This assertion astonished his hearers beyond all measure, but the manner in which Giorgione accomplished his purpose was as follows. He painted a nude figure, with its back turned to the spectator, and at the feet of the figure was a limpid stream, wherein the reflection of the front was