Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/17

Rh three on each side: San Benedetto, San Romualdo, and San Lorenzo, on the one side namely; with San Girolamo, San Mauro, and San Placido, on the other. Beneath this picture, which, for a work in fresco, w^as then considered very beautiful, Raphael wrote his name in large and clearly legible letters. In the same city Raphael was commissioned to paint a picture of Our Lady by the nuns of Sant’ Antonio of Padua; the Infant Christ is in the lap of the Virgin and is fully clothed, as it pleased those simple and pious ladies that he should be: on each side of Our Lady are figures of saints, San Pietro namely, with San Paolo, Santa Cecilia, and Santa Catarina. To these two holy virgins the master has given the most lovely features and most graceful attitudes; he has also adorned them with the most fanciful and varied headdresses that could be imagined—a very unusual thing at that time. In a lunette above this picture he painted a figure of the Almighty Father, which is extremely fine, and on the Predella are three scenes from the history of Christ, in very small figures. The first of these represents the Saviour praying in the garden; in the second he is seen bearing the cross, and here the movements and attitudes of certain soldiers who are dragging him along, are singularly beautiful; the third shows him lying dead in the lap of the Madonna. The whole work is without doubt very admirable: it is full of devout feeling, and is held in the utmost veneration by the nuns for whom it was painted. It is very highly commended by all painters likewise. But I will not omit to mention in this place, that after Raphael had been to Florence, he is known to have much