Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/488

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In Florence there followed a very distinguished engraver of intaglio, Domenico di Polo namely, a native of that city, who was a disciple of Giovanni delle Corniole, of whom we have before spoken. In our own days this master has made an admirably executed portrait of the Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, making dies in steel, and producing from them very beautiful medals with a '^‘Fiorenza” on the reverse. He also took the portrait of the Duke Cosimo in the first year of his election to the government of Florence; placing the signs of the zodiac on the reverse. Domenico executed many other small engravings, but of these we need not make further mention: he died in his sixty-fifth year.

Domenico Valerio Marmita and Giovanni, of Castel Bolognese, being dead, there still remained many masters who have since greatly surpassed the above. This has been done for example in Venice by the Ferrarese, Luigi Anichini, the delicate exactitude and fine sharpness of whose works render ' them a marvel. But far beyond all else has gone Alessandro Cesati, called Il Greco, by whom every other artist is surpassed in the grace and perfection as well as in the universality of his productions. The works of this master, whether in cameos with the lathe he has executed rilievi or intagli di cavo, or whether he produces dies in steel with the gravers, are of such perfect excellence and exhibit all the minutias of art, rendered with such assiduous and patient care, that better could not even be imagined, and whoever shall desire to be amazed at the wonders performed by this Alessandro, let him examine a medal which that artist executed for Pope Paul III., the portrait of that Pontitf namely, and so treated that it really seems to be alive, with the reverse exhibiting Alexander the Great, who, having thrown himself at the feet of the High Priest of Jerusalem, is doing homage to that Pontiff, figures of which the beauty is astonishing; it would not be possible indeed to produce anything better. Nay, Michelagnolo himself, looking at them one day, while Giorgio