Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/468

460 stood in the closest relations of service with Leo X., caused it to be presented to his Holiness, by whom the artist was made a Cavalier or Knight and duly remunerated for so beautiful a picture. It now appeared to Giovan-Antonio that he had become a great man, and he began to refuse all labour unless when he was driven to work by actual want.

Agostino Chigi, being then called by certain of his affairs to Siena, took Giovan-Antonio with him, but while dwelling there, the artist, being a Knight without revenues, was compelled to set himself to work; he therefore painted a picture, the subject of which was Our Saviour Christ in the act of being taken from the cross; beneath is the Virgin in a swoon, with an armed warrior whose back is turned to the spectator, but the front of whose figure is shown as reflected from certain pieces of armour lying on the earth, and which armour is as clear as a mirror. This picture, which was and is considered one of the best of Razzi’s works, was placed in the church of San Francesco, on the right hand as one enters the church. In the cloister also, which is beside the said church of San Francesco, Giovan-Antonio executed a fresco of Christ scourged at the column, with numerous figures of Jews standing around Pilate, and a range of columns designed in perspective, forming a kind of vestibule. In this work Giovan-Antonio painted the portrait of himself without a beard, or rather with the beard shaven, and with long hair as they were worn at that time.

No long time afterwards, our artist painted certain pictures for the Signor Jacopo Sesto of Piombino; and, being with Signor Jacopo in that place, he furthermore depicted other works on cloth for the same Noble. Wherefore, besides many presents and marks of favour which were shown him by Signor Jacopo, Razzi also procured by his means a number of little animals from his Island of Elba, of the kind pro-