Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/159

Rh Palace of San Giorgio: here he first prepared singularly beautiful compartments in stucco-work, and in the very graceful ceiling of the chapel he depicted stories from the Life of San Lorenzo in fresco, the figures of the work being very numerous as well as beautiful. Francesco also executed an Altar-piece painted in oil and on stone for the same chapel, and in this he depicted the Nativity of Our Saviour Christ, introducing in that work, which was a singularly fine one, the Portrait of the before-mentioned Cardinal, taken from the life.

At a subsequent period, Francesco was commissioned to execute another work in the Chapel belonging to the Brotherhood of the Misericordia, to which we have previously alluded. Here Jacopo del Conte had painted the Preaching and the Baptism of St. John, and had acquitted himself exceedingly well therein, although he had not surpassed Francesco. The Venetian Battista Franco and Piero Ligorio had also produced works in that place, and Francesco Salviati now commenced a painting which is close beside his former production, the story of the Visitation namely. But although a well-conducted work, this picture, the subject of which is the Birth of St. John, is by no means equal to the earlier performance. For Messer Bartolommeo Bussotti our artist painted two figures in fresco at the upper end of the same chapel, the Apostle St. Andrew and San Bartolommeo, two very fine figures; these he executed one on each side of the altar on which Jacopo del Conte depicted a Deposition from the Cross, which is an admirable work, nay, the best that Jacopo had then produced.

In the year 1550, and when Julius III. had been elected High PontilF, Francesco undertook certain stories in fresco for the Arch erected on the upper end of the staircase at San Pietro, on the occasion of the Pope’s coronation, and these were very beautiful. In the same year the Company of the Sacrament caused a Sepulchre to be represented in the Church of the Minerva, with several ranges of steps and