Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/409

Rh career. No long time afterwards, and when his judgment had increased with his years, he saw the works of Andrea Mantegna in Verona, and as it appeared to him that these were, as indeed was the truth, of another manner and better quality than those of his master Liberale, he prevailed on his father to permit him to repair to Mantua, where he was allowed, with the full consent and favour of Liberale, to place himself with Mantegna.

Here Giovanni Francesco acquired so much and so rapidly, under his new master, that in a short time Andrea Mantegna was enabled to send forth works of the disciple as those of his own hand. Many years had not elapsed, in short, before Caroto became a very able artist. The first works which he executed after leaving Mantegna, were the folding-doors which close in the Altar of the Three Kings, in the church of the Hospital of San Cosimo, on which he depicted the Circumcision of Christ, the Flight into Egypt, and other figures, besides those of the Holy Family. In the church of the Frati Ingesuati, called San Girolamo, Caroto painted the Madonna, with the Angel of the Annunciation, in two angles of a chapel; and for the Prior of the Monks of San Giorgio, he executed a small picture of a Presepio, in which he was seen to have greatly ameliorated his manner; the heads of the shepherds, and, indeed, of all the other figures in this work, exhibiting an expression so pleasing and so beautiful, that the work has been much and greatly extolled; nay, were it not that the ground of this picture was badly prepared, insomuch that it has peeled ofij and the work is by consequence becoming spoiled, this painting alone might have sufficed to keep the memory of the artist ever living in the recollections of his fellow citizens.

Having then received a commission from the men who ruled in the Brotherhood of the Angel Kaphael, to paint a chapel which belonged to them in the church of Sant’ Eufemia, II Caroto depicted therein two stories of the Angel Raphael in fresco, with three figures of large size in oil as the altar piece, all representing Angels, Raphael in the centre that is to say, with Gabriel and Michael on each side; these figures