Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/478

470 after having long borne with infinite patience the brutalities and absurdities of Giovan-Antonio, who was truly worthy of that name of Mattaccio, or Arch-fool, which was given to him, as we have said, by the fathers of Monte Oliveto.

The Sienese Riccio, a tolerably able and experienced painter, who was a disciple of Giovan-Antonio, took the daughter of his master, who had been very carefully and respectably brought up by her mother, for his wife, and became heir to all that his father-in-law had left in matters of art. This Riccio has produced many commendable works in Siena and elsewhere; in the cathedral for example there is a chapel to the left as you enter the church, decorated with paintings and stucco-work, by his hand. He is now in Lucca, where he has already executed many excellent works, and continues to do so.

There was also a disciple of Razzi who was called Giomo del Mattaccio, but as he died young and could give but slight evidence of his genius and acquirements, it does not need that I should speak of him further.

Giovan-Antonio died in the year 1554, when he had attained his seventy-fifth year.

When Pietro Perugino, then an old man, was painting the picture for the high altar of the Servites, in Florence, a