Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/312

304 succeeded Polidoro have sought to imitate his manner whenever they have proposed to secure to themselves the praise of excellence. From his fate also we may learn to comprehend and to fear the instability of Fortune, and the strange events that she is capable of producing. Men from whom a totally different result might have been expected, she permits suddenly to attain the summit of excellence in some profession, to the no small discomfiture of many who have vainly toiled for many years in the same art; yet shall this same Fortune allow those so favoured to arrive, after heavy trials and labours, at a most miserable and cruel end, which she suffers to come upon them at the moment when they were hoping to enjoy the reward of all their pains: nay, this will sometimes happen in so horrible and monstrous a fashion, that pity itself flies affrighted, virtue is outraged, and benefits are repaid by an incredible and wonderful ingratitude. By as much, therefore, as the Art of painting may rejoice in the richly productive life of Polidoro, by so much may she justly complain of Fortune, who showed herself friendly to this great genius at one moment, only that she might afterwards, and when it was least expected, conduct him to a painful and melancholy death.

When able men devote themselves to some particular study, and pursue the same with all the power of their minds, they are sometimes, and at a moment when it was least expected, exalted before the eyes of all men, and called to distinguished honours, as was exemplified, after many labours endured in his vocation, in the case of the Florentine painter, Rosso.