Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/320

312 people bewildered and stultified. Now this may have happened to Rosso in the air of Rome, where he beheld the works in architecture and sculpture, the pictures and statues of Michelagnolo, which may have disturbed his self-possession, producing on him the effect perceived in Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, who were driven by the discouragement they experienced in Rome to flee from that city, without having left therein any work to serve as a memorial of their visit. Be the cause what it may. Rosso never produced a picture of so little merit, which is rendered all the more obvious as this work has to endure comparison with those of Raffaello da Urbino.

At that time Rosso painted a picture of a Dead Christ, supported by two Angels, for the Bishop Tornabuoni, who was his friend; this work, which is an exceedingly beautiful one, is now in the possession of the heirs of Monsignore della Casa. For the Baviera he prepared drawings of all the Gods, for copper-plates; these were afterwards engraved by Jacopo Caraglio: among these drawings are Saturn turning himself into a horse, and Pluto carrying off Proserpine, which is more particularly worthy of remark. Rosso likewise gave the sketch of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, which is now in a small church on the Piazza de’ Salviati in Rome.

Meanwhile the sack of the city took place, and the unfortunate Rosso was made prisoner by the Germans, from whom he received grievous maltreatment, seeing that, besides despoiling him of his clothing, they compelled him to go barefoot, and without any covering on his head, to the shop of a victualler, whose whole stock they forced him to bear away at repeated visitations on his bare back. Thus illtreated by his captors, but not closely watched by them, he contrived with great pains to escape to Perugia, where he was most amicably received and supplied with clothing by the painter Domenico di Paris, for whom he designed a