Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/411

Rh manner to such complete perfection that, in a few years, favoured as he was by nature and advanced by diligent study, he became a most remarkable and excellent artist. Of a timid and anxious disposition, he subjected himself to severe and continual labours in his art for the support of his family, which he found an oppressive burthen, and though disposed by nature towards everything good, he, nevertheless, afflicted himself more than was reasonable by resisting the pressure of those passions by which man is most commonly assailed. In the exercise of his art, Antonio betrayed the melancholy attributed to his disposition f but, devoted to the labours of his vocation, he was a zealous inquirer into all the difficulties incidental to the calling he had chosen. Of his success we have proof in a vast multitude of figures executed by his hand in the cathedral of Parma: they arepainted in fresco, and finished with much care. These pictures are in the great cupola of the church, and the foreshortenings are managed with extraordinary ability, as the spectator, regarding the work from below, perceives, to his admiring astonishment.