Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/293

Rh a disciple of Miclielagnolo Buonarroti, where he performed many admirable works; and lastly, Zanobi di Poggino, by whom a large number of paintings are to be seen in the city of Florence.

Finally, exhausted and in very bad health, having been long suffering from internal disease, Giovan Antonio rendered his soul to God at the age of fifty-two years. Flis death caused deep regret, seeing that he was a man of great rectitude of character; his manner in painting gave much satisfaction, because he imparted to his figures an air of piety and a mildness of expression which please those who care little for the difficult and enterprizing in art, but like modest, easy, mild, and graceful delineations. His body was opened after his death, when three large stones each of the size of an egg were found within him; he would never consent to suffer an operation, nor ever hear it mentioned to him while he lived.

It does not often happen, that those who confine their labours exclusively to the country wherein they were born, are exalted by fortune to that elevation whereunto their abilities should entitle them, whereas he who visits many places is almost certain to find his merits acknowledged in one of them, either sooner or later. When it chances, however, that the due reward of a man’s labours is very late in being attained, he is but too frequently prevented from enjoying it for any great length of time by the venom of death, as we shall see to have been the case with Girolamo da Treviso.

This artist was held to be a very good master, for although he was not particularly distinguished as to design, he was an exceedingly pleasing colourist in oil as well as in fresco, and carefully imitated the modes of proceeding adopted by Raffa-