Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/458

450 figures which are very finely foreshortened and admirably beautiful. He painted in fresco for a certain merchant the front of a house, which is situate on the road leading from San Maurizio to San Moise, and this also was a very beautiful work, but the sea-air is gradually destroying that production. For Cammillo Trevisano, Paulino painted a Loggia and an apartment in fresco at Murano, which were greatly admired, and at the monastery of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, he painted the Marriage at Cana in Galilee, at the upper end of a very large room; this work is most wonderful for grandeur, for power of invention, for number of figures, and for variety of vestments: if I recollect rightly, it comprises more than a hundred and fifty heads, all judiciously varied and executed with the utmost care.

The same artist was commissioned by the procurators of' San Marco to paint certain angular medallions; these are in the ceiling of the Nicene library, which was bequeathed to the Signoria by the Cardinal Bessarion, with a vast treasure of Greek books collected by that prelate. Now the abovenamed Proveditors, when they caused the painting of the library to be commenced, had promised a prize of honour, over and above the price agreed on, to him who should best acquit himself in the decoration of the same, the work was then divided among the best painters at that time in Venice.

Being completed, and after all the pictures had been well examined, a golden chain was placed around the neck of Paulino, he, by the opinion of all, being adjudged to have done the best. The picture which obtained him this victory and prize of honour, was that wherein he has represented Music; here are depicted three young and very beautiful women, one, the most beautiful of all, is playing on the bassviol, her eyes are cast down, being fixed on the handle of the instrument, and her attitude clearly shows that her ear