Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/246

238 whom he afterwards more openly requested the aid which he desired to receive. Having learned the methods of using colours, therefore, Baccio painted a picture in oil, representing the Holy Fathers delivered from the Limbo by Our Saviour; and in another picture he painted Noah inebriated in the presence of his sons. He also attempted to execute certain mural paintings in the fresh plaster, and depicted various heads, arms, legs, and torsi, or trunks, coloured in different manners on the walls of his house; but finding more difficulty in that undertaking than he had expected, from the rapidity with which the plaster dried, he returned to his earlier studies, and to works in relief.

He then executed a marble figure of Mercury in the form of a youth, holding the flute in his hand; to this work, which was three braccia and a half high, he gave much study, it was accordingly extolled by all, and considered to be a rare and excellent production. In the year 1530, that figure was purchased by Giovanni Battista della Palla, who sent it to France for the King, Francis I., by whom it was very highly prized.

Baccio devoted himself with earnest and diligent study to the examination and copying of anatomical details, wherein he persevered for months, and even years. And without doubt in this man the desire for honour and excellence in his art, and for the power of working effectually therein, does well merit high commendation; impelled by which desire, and by a firm will, with which it was manifest indeed that he had been endowed by nature from his earliest youth, even more largely than with aptitude or readiness in art,— impelled by this, I say, Baccio spared himself no labour, nor did he permit himself any relaxation: always intent on acquiring, or occupied in manual operations, he was never to be found idle; hoping by incessant practice to surpass all who had previously pursued his vocation, as he firmly believed that he should do: this being the end which he promised himself as the reward of studies so zealously persisted in, and of labours so perpetually endured. Continuing, therefore, this life of studious labour, he not only gave to the world a vast number of plates designed by his own hand in various modes, but, desirous of ascertaining whether the art