Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/462

454 Antonio executed numerous portraits from the life, with that glowing manner of colouring of his which he had brought from Lombardy, and he then also made many friends in Siena, but more because the inhabitants of that city are much inclined to favour foreigners than on account of his merits as a painter. He was besides a man of joyous life and cheerful manners, a lover of pleasure, and ever ready to contribute to the amusement of others, even though it were not always in the most creditable manner, for which cause he obtained more than one by-name, among others that of Mattaccio, or the arch-fool; whereat, instead of being displeased and resenting the same, he would laugh and glorify himself, nay, he would make sonnets and canzonets upon these opprobrious epithets, which songs he wrould then sing to the lute, and that without reserve.

Giovan-Antonio had a fancy for keeping all sorts of strange animals in his house, badgers, squirrels, apes, cat-a mountains, dwarf asses, horses and barbs to run races, magpies, dwarf chickens, tortoises, Indian doves, and other animals of similar kind, whatever he could get into his hands in short; he was always surrounded by children and young men, in whose society he took much pleasure; and besides the animals above-named, he had a raven, which he had so effectually taught to speak, that this creature counterfeited the voice of Giovan-Antonio exactly in some things, more especially in replying to any one who knocked at the door, nay, this last he did so perfectly, that he seemed to be the painter’s very self, as all the Sienese well know.

The other animals also were so tame that they were constantly assembled about his person, while he was in the house, and came round all