Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/135

Rh common herd, and always having his house full of parrots, apes, dwarfed asses, little horses from Elba, a raven that could speak, Barbary horses for running races, and other things of similar kind, wherewith he had made himself a name among the vulgar, who could talk of nothing else but of his follies.

Giovan Antonio had painted the front of a house in fresco for Messer Agostino Bardi, while Domenico at the same time, and in competition with Giovan Antonio, adorned in like manner the front of a house belonging to the Borghese family, which is situate close to the column of Postierla and near the cathedral, a work to which he gave the most careful study. In a decoration which forms a kind of frieze immediately beneath the roof, our artist executed certain small figures in chiaro-scuro, which have been much extolled, and in the spaces between the three ranges of windows made in the stone called Travertine, which adorn that palace, he painted numerous figures of heathen deities and others, some coloured to imitate bronze, some in chiaro-scuro, and some painted in various colours. These also were more than tolerably well done, although the work of Giovan Antonio received more general commendation than that of Domenico. Both of these façades were painted in the year 1512.

For the church of San Benedetto, which is situate outside the gate of Tufi, and belongs to a monastery of the monks of Monte Oliveto, Domenico painted a picture, the subject of which is Santa Caterina receiving the Stigmata. The saint is represented within a building, and has St. Benedict standing on her right hand -with St. Jerome, in his robes as a Cardinal, on the left; and this picture, having much harmony of colouring, with very great relief, has ever been and still is much extolled. On the predella of this picture, the artist painted small historical representations in tempera, and these have indescribable animation and boldness; they are, moreover, executed with so much facility of design, that they could not possibly have more grace than we find displayed in them, and they yet appear to have been produced without the slightest effort in the world. In one of these stories