Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/141

Rh excellence, and which are managed with so much ability that they amply suffice to show the extensive and exact acquaintance which Domenico possessed with the laws of perspective.

On the following or side-wall is a picture exhibiting the history of the Dictator, Posthumius Tiburtius, who, having committed the charge of the army to his only son, and made him his substitute, with command to do nothing further than watch the camp, caused him to be put to death for disobedience, inasmuch as that he, having found a fair occasion for making an assault upon the enemy, had done so, and had obtained the victory. In this work Domenico has shown us Posthumius, an old man with shaven beard, who stands with the right hand laid upon an axe, while he points with the left towards the body of his son, whom he displays to the army lying dead on the earth, the figure of the dead being foreshortened with admirable ability. Beneath this picture, which is a very beautiful one, is a highly appropriate inscription.

The octangle which follows has the story of Spurius Cassius, whom the senate, suspecting of a desire to make himself king, has caused to be decapitated, while they also command that his dwelling shall be razed to the ground. In this work, the head, which is beside the executioner, and the body, which is foreshortened on the earth, are exceedingly beautiful. In the next picture is the Tribune Publius Mutius, causing all his colleagues, who had aspired with Spurius Cassius to become the tyrants of their country, to be given over to the flames; and in this painting the fires, by which the bodies of those condemned persons are seen to be consumed, are treated admirably and executed with singular art.

At the opposite end of the hall is a picture wherein is the Athenian Codrus, who, having learned that the oracle had declared victory to the army whose king should be slain in the battle, laid down his regiil vestments, entered unknown among the ranks of the enemy, and caused himself to be slain by their hands, thus giving victory to his people by means of the sacrifice of his own life. Domenico has depicted the Athenian seated amidst his nobles, who stand around him while he despoils himself of the royal robes; close at hand is a round temple of great beauty, and in the extreme