Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/467

Rh him ons of the principal rooms in his palace in the Trastevere to paint. This is the apartment which opens on the great hall, and the subject of the work was Alexander and Roxana in their bridal chamber. Among other figures Razzi here depicted Loves employed in various offices; some unfasten the cuirass of Alexander, others draw off his sandals or buskins, some carry away and lay aside his helmet and mantle, while others scatter flowers upon the bed or perform services of similar kind; near the chimney is a figure of Vulcan engaged in the forging of arrows.

This work was then considered a very good and praiseworthy performance, and if II Mattaccio, who had some very excellent parts, and was powerfully aided by nature, had profited by the mishap we have referred to above, and then devoted himself to his studies, as any other would have done, he might have become a very excellent painter; but he, whose thoughts were ever running on some absurdity, worked by fits and starts only, or when the fancy took him, caring for nothing more earnestly than the dressing himself pompously, wearing a doublet of brocade, a short cloak all covered over and decorated with cloth of gold, head-gear of the richest fashion, a gold chain and other fopperies of similar kind, best suited to Jack-puddings and Mountebanks, in all which Agostino, whom that humour of his diverted greatly, found the finest sport in the world.

Pope Julius II. having then died, and Leo X., whom all fantastic and light-minded creatures such as was this man pleased well; Leo X., I say, being created high Pontiff, II Mattaccio was suddenly raised to the very summit of delight, and the rather as he detested Julius, who had done him that scorn; wherefore, desiring to make his talents known to the new- Pontiff, he set himself to work, and executed a painting W'herein he depicted a nude figure of Lucretia stabbing herself with the poniard. And as fortune is favourable to fools and wall sometimes bring aid to thoughtless men, so GriovanAntonio succeeded in producing the most beautiful form of a woman that can be conceived, with a head that was breathing.

The work thus happily completed, Agostino Chigi, who