Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/444

436 spoils of war, and various matters besides, of which I need make no farther mention.

In Venice Michele San Michele prepared the model for a convent belonging to the nuns of San Biagio Catoldo, which was highly extolled, and when it was afterwards determined in Verona to rebuild the Lazzaretto, or hospital to serve for those who may be struck by the malady in times of pestilence (the old one, with other houses in the suburb near it, having been demolished), Michele was called on to make a design, wherein he succeeded to a marvel; it is indeed singularly beautiful: the building was to be erected near the river, and at some distance from the plain. But this design, truly beautiful, as we have said, and admirably adapted to its purpose in every part, which is now in the possession of Luigi Brugnoli, nephew of San Michele, was nevertheless not put into execution as a whole; the want of judgment and poverty of spirit betrayed by certain of those who had authority, caused the work to be grievously curtailed; nay, it was at length contracted and reduced to utter meanness, by men who misused the authority wherewith they had been invested by the public, to the maiming and distortion of the building; and this they were enabled to do by the too early death of the gentlemen who had, in the first instance, been called on to superintend the work, and whose greatness of mind was equal to their nobility of place.

The singularly beautiful palace which the Signor Counts of Canossa possess in Verona, was in like manner a work of Michele San Michele, which was built by command of the most reverend Monsignore di Bajus, who, when in the world, had been the Count Ludovico Canossa, a man highly celebrated by all the writers of his time. For the same prelate San Michele built another magnificent palace at the villa of Grezzano, in the Veronese territory. It was after his design also that the façade of the castle belonging to the Counts Bevilacqua was restored, as were indeed all the apart ments of that abode, which is called the Castello di Bevilacqua.