Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/474

466 holy Saint praying for him on her knees, her orisons were so acceptable to God, that on the head of the criminal being struck ofif, his soul was seen to ascend into heaven. So greatly may avail with the mercy of God the prayers of those holy persons who are truly in his grace.

In this story there is a vast number of persons represented, but if they are not of the highest perfection, no man need marvel at that, since I have heard it affirmed as a fact, that the idleness and negligence of Giovan-Antonio had reached to such a point as to prevent him from ever making either designs or cartoons when he had a work of this kind to execute, he drawing with his pencil immediately on the fresh intonaco (a most extraordinary thing), and in this manner it is that he appears to have treated the picture in question. The same artist painted a figure of the Almighty Father in the arch which forms the entrance to the above-named chapel, but the remaining stories were not finished by himself, a circumstance principally attributable to his idleness, he not choosing to work except by fits and starts, but partly also to the fact that he could not obtain payment from those who had caused that chapel to be thus decorated. Beneath the stories above described is a picture by the same artist, representing God the Father; and in the lower part is a Madonna after the old manner, with San Domenico, San Gismondo, San Sebastiano, and Santa Caterina.

In the church of Sant’ Agostino, and to the right of the entrance, Giovan-Antonio painted an Adoration of the Magi, which has ever been considered a good work, as it well deserves to be. For, to say nothing of the figure of Our Lady, which is highly extolled, as are the first of the three Magi and certain of the horses, there is the head of a Shepherd, seen between two trees, which does truly appear to be alive.

Over that gate of the city called San Viene, our artist painted the Nativity of Jesus Christ, wfith angels in the air above: this is a fresco, and is depicted within a large tabernacle. Among the angels is one, a foreshortened figure of extraordinary beauty and relief, who is pointing to the Saviour as if he would show to all men the Word made