Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/378

370 Brotherhood of the Steccata, perceiving that he had altogether neglected and laid aside the work he had engaged to accomplish for them, and having, peradventure, as is often done, paid him beforehand, brought a law-suit against him, from the consequences of which he thought it advisable to withdraw himself.

One night, therefore, Francesco, accompanied by certain of his friends, took flight to Casal Maggiore, where he contrived to get his alchemy out of his head for a time, and painted a picture for the church of San Stefano. The subject of this work is Our Lady appearing in the air, with San Giovanni Battista and San Stefano beneath her. He afterwards completed a picture (and this was the last painting executed by Francesco) representing the Roman Lucretia, a work of the most divine beauty, and one of the best that ever proceeded from his hand; but, however the thing has chanced I know not, this picture has been lost, nor is it possible to ascertain what has become of it.

There is a painting by this master now in the house of Messer Niccolo Bufalini at Citta di Castello; it represents a group of Nymphs; and in the same town is a cradle with infants, which he painted for the Signora Angiola de’ Rossi of Parma, wife of the Signor Alessandro Yitelli.

But Francesco, still having his thoughts filled with that alchemy, as happens to all those who have once given themselves to running after its phantoms; and having changed from the delicate, amiable, and elegant person that he was, to a bearded, long-haired, neglected, and almost savage, or wild man, became at length strange and melancholy, thus con stantly falling from bad to worse. In this condition he was attacked by a malignant fever, which caused him in a very few days to pass to a better life; and so it was that Fran-