Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/166

158 dirty and ill-regulated, while he shunned the society of his fellows, was the way to render himself a great man, and to secure immortality, he brought himself to an evil end; for nature cannot always support the repeated injuries which men thus constituted will sometimes offer her. Having become very ill, therefore, while yet but in his twenty-fifth year, Bartolommeo returned to Arezzo in the hope of obtaining a cure, and with the full intention of taking such measures as might be required for the restoration of his health. But he did not maintain his purpose, for he could not prevail on himself to discontinue his wonted studies, nor to amend the irregularities of his life; in four months, therefore, and but a short time after the death of Griovan-Antonio Lappoli, Bartolommeo died also, thus bearing his master company.

The loss of this young man caused infinite grief to all those of his native city, where his remarkable commencement had awakened hopes that he would do the highest honour, not only to Arezzo, but to all Tuscany. Nor indeed can any man who examines the drawings which he made while still but a youth, fail to regard these works with amazement, or restrain his compassion as he reflects on the early death of the artist.

Among the many disciples of Pietro Perugino, there was none, after Raphael of ITrbino, who was more zealous or more persistent in his studies than Niccolo Soggi, whose life we are now about to write. This artist was born in Florence, and was a son of Jacopo Soggi, a decent and upright, but not very rich man. At a later period Niccolo was for some time in the service of Messer Antonio dal Monte, wherefore his father Jacopo, having a farm at Valdichiana, and passing the greater part of his time there, came by the vicinity of their dwellings to have no little intercourse with the abovenamed Messer Anton di Monte.

This Jacopo then, perceiving in his son much inclination for painting, determined to place him with Pietro Perugino,