Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/405

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The work of the chapel of the Visitation was meanwhile not suffered to be neglected, but was carried forward with so much diligence that it was completed during the lifetime of Mosca, with the exception of two Birds only, and even these would not have been left unfinished, had it not chanced that Messer Bastiano Gualtieri, Bishop of Viterbo, had kept Simone occupied (as I have said before) with certain decorations in marble consisting of four pieces; these, when they were finished, the Bishop sent into France to the Cardinal of Loraine, who always had held them in great estimation, and with reason, for they were indeed beautiful to a marvel; finely enriched with exquisitely varied foliage, &c., and so carefully executed, with so delicate a finish, that this is considered to be one of the best works ever performed by Mosca.

That artist died no long time after the completion of the above-named decorations, and his death was not a little to the loss of that church of Orvieto, wherein he was honourably interred, an event which took place in the year 1554, and when Mosca had attained his fifty-eighth year.

Francesco Moschino was chosen by the wardens of the Cathedral to succeed his father Simone, but did not greatly value the appointment, which he left to Raffaello da Montelupo. Moschino afterwards repaired to Rome, where he finished two very graceful little figures in marble for Messer Roberto Strozzi, the Mars and Venus that is to say, which are in the court-yard of Messer Roberto’s house in the Banchi. He afterwards executed a story of very small figures almost in full relief, and which represented Diana surprised while bathing with her Nymphs, by Action, whom she turns into a stag, when he is torn to pieces by his own hounds; this work Moschino took with him to Florence, and presented it to the Signor Duke Cosimo, whose service he was very desirous of entering.

His Excellency having accepted and much commended the work, did not refuse to comply with the wish of Moschino, as indeed he never has refused to fulfil the wishes of any