Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/387

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And now, had Fate permitted that Palma should have departed this life on the completion of that work, he alone would have borne off the crown, and have retained the reputation of having surpassed all those whom we now celebrate as our greatest and most divine masters; but the further duration of his life giving occasion to other productions, became to him the cause of deterioration, since, not maintaining himself at the point to which he had attained, all that he had previously acquired gradually diminished, and he sank from the position which he had, on the contrary, been confidently expected even further to improve and exalt. Finally, being satisfied with the fact that one or two wellexecuted works partly exonerated him from the censures which others had brought on his name, Jacopo Palma died at Venice, in the forty-eighth year of his age.

A friend and companion of Palma was the Venetian painter Lorenzo Lotto, who had imitated the manner of the Bellini for a time, and had afterwards attached himself to the manner of Giorgione, as may be seen from the numerous pictures and portraits by his hand in the houses of the Venetian gentry. In the house of Andrea Odoni is a portrait of the latter by Lorenzo, a very beautiful thing; and in the house of the Florentine Tommaso da Empoli there is the Birth of Christ, the time chosen being night, which is a work of admirable beauty. In this picture is particularly to be remarked, that the splendour of Christ is made to illuminate the whole in a very fine manner. The Madonna is kneeling;