Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/426

418 a large company of infantry; wherefore the master served ever after as a valiant soldier, no less than as an ingenious architect and engineer. At length, Giovan-Battista was sent by the Marquis to Aiuola, a fortress in the Chianti, when, as he was disposing the artillery, he was wounded in the head by a musket ball, and being carried by his soldiers to the deanery of San Paolo, in the bishopric of Ricasoli, he there died in a few days. His remains were borne to San Marino, where he received honourable sepulture at the hands of his children.

Very greatly does Giovan-Battista merit to be extolled, for not only was he truly excellent in his profession, but it is furthermore to be remembered, that as he did not adopt the same till late in life, in his thirty-fifth year namely, it is all the more remarkable that he should have attained to so much eminence in art; and we may reasonably conclude that he would have been indeed most extraordinary had he commenced in his youth, or at the usual age.

San Marino was somewhat obstinate, and to make him change an opinion which he had once adopted, was a difficult undertaking. He found singular delight in the reading of historical relations, and even made a great collection of such himself, writing down the most notable circumstances of each narrative with great pains and labour. His death caused much grief to the Duke and to his very numerous friends; wherefore, when his son Giovan-Andrea came to kiss the hand of the Duchess, he was most kindly received by her, and, in consideration of his father’s merits and fidelity, many advantageous offers of service and advantage were made to him.

San Marino died in his forty-eighth year.

S was born at Verona, in the year 1484. The youth acquired the first principles of architecture under the discipline of his father, Giovanni, and of Bartolommeo his uncle, two excellent architects; and in the sixteenth year of his age he repaired to Rome, leaving his