Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/283

Rh divine emanations, while a companion depicted near him, a figure much foreshortened, stands gazing at San Francesco with the aspect of one Avho is overwhelmed with the extremity of his amazement.

Pomponio likewise painted a fresco for the monks of Xia Vigna at the end of their refectory, the subject Our Lord between the two disciples, at Emmaus. In the little town of San Vito, his native place, which is at the distance of about twenty miles from Udine, he painted a fresco in the church of Santa Maria, decorating therewith the chapel of the Madonna above-named in so beautiful a manner, and so much to the satisfaction of all, that he received from the most reverend Cardinal, Maria Grimani, patriarch of Aquileia and lord of San Vito, the distinction of being enrolled among the nobles of that place.

In this life of Pordenone it has been my wish to leave a memorial of these excellent artists of Friuli, because it appears to me that their endowments have well merited the same, and to the end that what is here said shall make known how many have been those who, since that beginning, have proved themselves to possess even much higher excellence, as we remarked in the commencement, and as will be further mentioned in the life of Giovanni Picamatori to whom our age has been so largely indebted for his works in stucco, and for the grottesche and arabesques executed by his hand.

But to return to Pordenone: after having performed all those works which we have enumerated as executed by him at Venice, in the time of the most illustrious Gritti, this master died in the manner we have related and in the year 1540. He was among the most able artists that our age has possessed, his figures more particularly appear entirely round and as if detached from the wall, seeming rather in relief than a mere level surface, he may therefore be justly enumerated among those by whom the art has been enriched and who have contributed to the general progress and benefit thereof