Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/406

398 a manner, and the whole work is so treated, that it has the appearance, as I have said, of having been done in miniature.

For the chapel of the Madonna, in the cathedral of Verona, Liberale painted pictures of similar character, on a small predella. They exhibit events from the life of Our Lady, but were afterwards removed from that place by Monsignore Messer Giovanni Matteo Giberti, Bishop of Verona, who placed the predella in the chapel of the Episcopal Palace, where those bishops have their residence, this being the chapel in which they hear mass every morning. In the place which it now occupies, this predella is accompanied by a Crucifix of the most beautiful rilievo by the Veronese sculptor, Giovanni Battista, who is now living in Mantua. Liberale also painted a picture for the chapel of the Allegni family, which is in the church of San Vitale, wherein he depicted the Confessor, San Mestro, a Veronese and a man of great sanctity. The artist has placed him between San Francesco and San Domenico. In the Vittoria, a church and convent of certain Eremite Friars, this master painted a picture for the Scaltritegli family, in the chapel of San Girolamo namely. The subject is San Girolamo himself, in his habit as a Cardinal, with San Francesco and San Paolo, all much commended.

In the rood-loft of the church of San Giovanni-in-Monte, Liberale painted the Circumcision of Christ, with other pictures, which were destroyed no long time since, because that fabric was removed as being considered to diminish the beauty of the church. Being then invited by the General of the Monks of Monte Oliveto to Siena, Liberale painted in miniature or illuminated many books for that order; and these he did in so admirable a manner, that he was afterwards commissioned to complete the illumination of some which had remained unfinished, being merely written that