Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/410

402 also were executed with very good design, and exceedingly well coloured. It is true that the artist was reproached with having made the legs of those angels too slender, and not sufficiently round and soft, to which replying pleasantly, Giovan Francesco remarked, that since angels were represented as having wings, and with bodies as it were celestial and aerial, as if they were birds, so he thought it might be well permitted to give them light and slender limbs, to the end that they might rise into the air and take flight with the greater case.

In the church of San Giorgio, and at the altar where there is a Christ bearing the Cross, Giovan Francesco painted San Kocco and San Bastiano, with stories in the Predella, the figures of which are small and exceedingly beautiful. For the Company of the Madonna in San Bernardino he painted two pictures; these are on the predella of the altar belonging to that Company, and represent the Birth of the Madonna and the Slaughter of the Innocents, the latter exhibiting a rich variety in the attitudes of the executioners, as well as in those of the groups of infants, who are defended by the mothers with infinite animation. This work is held in the utmost veneration, and is covered that it may be the more effectually preserved. Its merits caused the master to receive a commission from the men of the Brotherhood of San Stefano, a confraternity which belongs to the ancient cathedral of Verona, and for whom he painted three pictures of similar figures for their altar. The subjects are all taken from the life of Our Lady, and exhibit her Marriage, the Birth of the Saviour, and the Adoration of the Magi.

These works being completed, it appeared to Giovan Francesco that he had obtained a sufficient reputation in Verona; he had, therefore, determined to depart, and seek other fields of exertion, but his friends and relations reasoned with him so effectually that they prevailed on him to remain: they furthermore caused him to take a young woman of noble birth, and the daughter of Messer Braliassarti Grandoni to wife, whom he conducted to his home in