Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/115

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From the palace you proceed to the garden, and to a pavilion or detached building of which all the rooms are on the ground-floor, and every one is adorned even to the ceiling with exceedingly beautiful decorations; halls, chambers, anterooms, all have been richly embellished by the same hand.

In this work Pordenone also took some part, as I have related in his life, as did the most excellent Sienese painter, Domenico Beccafumi, who there proved himself to be in nowise inferior to his brother artists, although it is in Siena that we must look for the best and most beautiful of all the numerous works performed by his hand.

But let us now return to Perino: after having completed his works in the palace of the prince, he executed a frieze for one of the rooms in the house of Giannetin Doria, adorning the same with exceedingly beautiful figures of women, and in different parts of the city he performed various labours both in fresco and oil-painting, for the houses of numerous gentlemen. He also painted a picture for the church of San Francesco, a singularly beautiful work, the drawing of which is very fine, with one of like manner for the church called Santa Maria de Consolatione, which last Perino executed by commission from a gentlewoman of the Baciadonne family. The subject of the last-named picture is the Birth of Christ, and it has received high commendation, but has been placed in a position so obscure that, for want of light to examine it properly, the spectator is unable to appreciate the merits thereof, and all the more because Perino has intentionally painted the picture with somewhat darkened colouring, so that it requires and ought to have an especially good light.

Perino also prepared designs wherein were delineated the greater part of the Æneid, the history of Dido more particularly; works which were executed with the purpose of having cloth of arras woven from them. He made drawings for decorating the poops of the prince’s galleys likewise, and these were then carved by the Florentine wood-carvers, Carota and Tasso, who gave proof therein of the admirable excellence to which they had attained in their art, and com-