Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/121

Rh piers, are four figures represented in the habiliments of Prophets, and of these it may be safely affirmed that the beauty and truth of proportion with which they are designed and finished could be surpassed by none; the whole work is indeed executed with so much care that its delicacy renders it more like a work in miniature than a painting in fresco. The colouring is exceedingly animated and pleasing, and the patience exercised throughout the whole work very remarkable, giving proof of that true and enduring love that should be entertained by every artist for his vocation. The painting of this work Perino did entirely with his own hand, but he caused a great part of the works in stucco to be executed after his designs by the Milanese Guglielmo, who had before been with Perino in Genoa, and was much beloved by that master; the latter had atone time formed the design of giving Guglielmo his own daughter to wife; but this artist has now been made Frate del Piombo, in the place of Sebastiano Veneziano, and is engaged in the restoration of the antiquities belonging to the House of Farnese.

While speaking of the chapel of Santa Trinità, I will not omit to mention that on one of the walls thereof there was an exceedingly beautiful sepulchral monument, on the sarcophagus of which lay the figure of a woman represented as dead, and which had been admirably sculptured by the artist Bologna; on each side were two nude figures of. boys, but the countenance of the dead woman was a portrait taken from that of a very famous courtezan of Pome, who had caused the tomb to be erected; the monks therefore had it removed, feeling scruples of conscience in respect to suffering a woman of such a character to be laid there with so much honour.

The paintings in the chapel of the Trinità, with many other designs of Perino, at length induced the most reverend Cardinal Farnese to confer a pension on our artist, and to employ him on various occasions. Pope Paul had caused a chimney-piece, which was in the apartment of the Conflagration, to be removed and carried thence to the chamber of the Segnatura, wherein were the carvings in wood that were