Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/361

Rh but where the beams thereof are stronger or weaker, according to the influences exercised by air and site, the miracles worked by it are proportionably greater or smaller. And there are, of a truth, certain places which continually produce minds evincing aptitudes and powers, of which others are not capable, and whereunto they cannot attain, whatever amount of labour they undergo, no endeavour enabling them to acquire the same degree of perfection. If, when we see a particular place producing certain kinds of fruit which had not previously grown there, we admire and are rejoiced, much more may we feel thus when we discover a man of distinguished genius in a country wherein none of similar eminence in the same vocation had previously been remarked. And thus it was in the case of the painter, Marco Calavrese. This artist left his native land of Calabria, and selected Naples for his abiding place, induced to that choice by the beauty and pleasantness of that city and of its site, although he had set forth on his w^ay with the purpose of repairing to Rome, there to attain the ultimate perfection which is acquired by the study of painting in that place. But so sweetly did the song of the syren sound in his ears— he delighting most especially in the tones and practice of the lute—and so gently did the soft waves of the Sebeto dissolve his determination to depart, that he remained the prisoner in body of that attractive land, until he rendered up his soul to heaven, and his mortal remains to their native earth.

A vast number of works were executed by Marco, both in oil and fresco, and he displayed a larger amount of ability than was evinced in that country by any other artist exercising his vocation there during the same time with himself. Of this we have a proof in his paintings at Aversa, which is situate about ten miles from Naples; and still more clearly was the same made manifest hy a picture in oil, painted for the high altar of the church of Sant’ Agostino, which is surrounded with rich decorations; as, also, by various pictures exhibiting figures and historical representations. Among