Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/432

424 the Veronese territories, accompanied by his wife and attended by their servants, proposing to take the waters at that place. But one day, after he had drunk the water accordingly, he permitted himself to be overcome by drowsiness, his wife indulging his wish to do so from compassion for his sufferings; hut it is very dangerous for those who have just taken those waters to sleep after them, and Francesco was seized with a violent fever, and finished the course of his life on the 2nd of Julv. 1519. When this event was made known to the marquis, he sent immediate orders by a courier to the effect that his body should be transported to Mantua, and this was done, though much against the will of the Veronese, and he was most honourably entombed at Mantua in the burial place of the Compagnia Segreta of San Francesco. This master lived to the sixty-fourth year of his age; his portrait, which is in the possession of Messer Fermo, was taken when he was fifty. Many eulogies were composed to his honour, and he was lamented by all who knew him as the good and pious man that he was. Francesco took for his wife. Madonna Francesca Gioacchini of Verona, but never had children.

The eldest of Francesco’s three brothers was called Monsignore; being a person weU versed in letters he received offices in Mantua from the marquis, who gave them to him from love to his brother, and from these he derived a good income. He lived eighty years, and left children by whom the family of the Monsignori is kept alive in Mantua. The second brother of Francesco was called Girolamo while he remained in the world, but among the Barefooted Brotherhood of San Francesco he was named Fra Cherubino: he was a fine calligrapher and admirable miniaturist. Francesco’s third brother, who was a monk of the Observantines of San Domenico, was called Fra Girolamo; his humility caused him to become a lay-brother, he was a man of good and holy life, and a tolerably able painter, as may be seen by a very beautiful picture of the Last Supper which he painted in the refectory of the convent of San Domenico in Mantua. He performed many other works in the same place besides that here mentioned; among them is the Passion of Our Lord, but this was left unfinished at his death. The singularly beautiful Last Supper in the refectory of the very rich abbey which