Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/69

Rh artists, were very widely diffused, and found favour among those who preferred the grace of Raphael to the profundity of Michelagnolo, and who showed themselves on many occasions to be more favourable to Raphael in their judgment, than to Buonarroti.

But not so Sebastiano, he was not among the followers of these extreme opinions; possessing an exquisite judgment, he fully and exactly appreciated the value of both these masters; the mind of Buonarroti was thereby disposed towards him, and being greatly pleased with the grace and beauty of his colouring, he took him into his protection, thinking also that by assisting Sebastiano in design, he might succeed without doing anything himself, in confounding those who held the above-described opinions, while he, under the shadow of a third person, might appear as judge between the two, Raphael or Sebastiano, deciding which of them was the best.

Things being at this point, and the works of Sebastiano having been exalted to great, or rather, infinite reputation by the praises lavished on them by Michelagnolo, to say nothing of the fact that they were in themselves beautiful and commendable, there was a certain Messer, I know not who, from Viterbo, who stood in high favour with the Pope, and who commissioned Sebastiano to paint a Dead Christ, with Our Lady weeping over him, for a certain chapel which he had caused to be erected in the Church of San Francesco at Viterbo; but although the work was finished with infinite care and zeal by Sebastiano, who executed a twilight Landscape therein, yet the invention was Michelagnolo’s, and the cartoon was prepared by his hand. The picture