Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/176

168 the Corpo di Cristo, in the last-named city, had a picture to give, and which was to he painted for the high altar of the church of San Domenico. This Niccolò desired to paint, hut so did also Giorgio Vasari, who was then but a youth, when Niccolò comported himself in a manner which few perhaps among those who exercise our art would have imitated. And the matter was on this wise: Niccolò, being himself a member of that Brotherhood, and perceiving that many among them, for the sake of encouraging and putting forward Giorgio, were content that he should receive that commission, remarking also, that Giorgio himself had a very great desire for the same,—Niccolò, I say, resolved, as he beheld the zeal and industry of the youth, to postpone his own necessities and wishes, proceeding in such sort that his companions should give the work to Giorgio Vasari, and looking more to the profit to be derived from that picture by the young artist, than to his own advantage or interest, and as he determined that it should be, so exactly did the men of his Brotherhood decide.

Domenico Giuntalocchi had meanwhile arrived in Rome, where fortune was so favourable to him that, having been made known to Don Martino, ambassador from the King of Portugal, he became attached to his train, and painted for him a picture on canvas, comprising some twenty portraits from the life, iikenesses namely, of the ambassador’s friends and followers, with Don Martino himself in the midst of them, and all represented as engaged in conversation; a work which pleased Don Martino so greatly that he considered Domenico to be the first painter in the world.

Don Ferrante Gonzaga being then made Viceroy of Sicily, and intending to fortify the towns of that viceroyalty, desired to have a young man at his hand who might design, and put on paper for him, all that he was daily planning, wherefore he wrote to Don Martino, requesting the latter to provide a youth who might be capable of doing this, and who would also be willing to enter his service: this person Don Martino was then to send to Don Ferrante with the least possible delay. Thereupon Don Martino first despatched certain designs by the hand of Domenico to Don Ferrante, among them a Colossus, which had been engraved on copper for Antonio Salamanca by Girolamo Fagiuoli of