Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/67

Rh envy; and the rather, as for some time he would permit none to see him work, nor would he impart his secret to any. Having become old, however, Giovanni at length confided his method to his disciple Ruggieri da Bruggia, by whom it was transmitted to Ausse, disciple of Ruggieri, and to others of whom we have made mention when speaking of oil-painting in general. But with all this, and notwithstanding that the merchants made purchases of these works, which they sent to princes and other great personages throughout the world, to their own great profit; yet the knowledge of the method did not extend beyond Flanders: and although these pictures retained the pungent odours imparted to them by the mixture of colours and oils, more particularly when they were new, so that it might have been possible, as one would suppose, to discover the ingredients and detect the mode of proceeding, yet the latter was not discovered until after the lapse of many years. But it then happened that certain Florentine merchants, who traded in Flanders and Naples, sent a picture painted in oil by Giovanni, and containing many figures, to the king of Naples, Alfonso I., by whom the work was greatly prized, as well for the beauty of the figures as for the new invention of the colouring, and every painter in the kingdom hastened to see it, when it was very highly extolled by all.