Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/342

334 lential fever, the disease found him in so weak and exhausted a state, that his life was destroyed by its violence in a very few days. He had undertaken a work to be executed at a short distance from Bologna, but as this remained unfinished, or rather scarcely well commefted at his death, it was completed at his own desire by the Bolognese painter Prospero Fontana, who acquitted himself of his task to admiration. The works of all the above-named artists were performed between the years 1506 and 1542, and there are drawings by them all in our collection of designs.

The labours which we perform in this life, in the hope of lifting ourselves from the earth and shielding ourselves from poverty, administering not to our own necessities only but to those of our kindred, are rendered sweet to us rather than painful, and the toils thus endured become an example and a wholesome nutriment to others. Then the righteousness of Heaven perceiving this, and regarding the uprightness of life with the aspirations towards excellence, the love of study and industrious efibrt herein displayed, is compelled to be more than commonly favourable and helpful to the genius of such an one, as in truth it was to that of the Florentine painter, Francia Bigio.