Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/179

Rh of the Emperor are also present with an Esquire, who holds the horse of the Monarch. Of the dead man raised to life bj the Cross of our Lord, as above-mentioned, it is to be remarked that Daniello bestowed infinite pains on the muscular development of this form, having studied the anatomy, and exhibited every minutia of the various parts with marvellous exactitude. He did as much for the figures of those who are placing this dead man upon the Cross, and for the bystanders, who remain astounded at the miracle they behold. He furthermore imagined a most fanciful bier, or cataletto, with a skeleton of the human form embracing the same, all which gives proof of rich invention, and is executed with infinite care and diligence.

Beneath these pictures, and serving as a species of socle or basement for each, are two female figures in chiaro-scuro, made to imitate marble, and singularly beautiful: they appear to support the stories. In the space beneath the first arch, and on the front of the chapel, are two figures standing upright; they are of the size of life, and represent, one San Francesco di Paola, the Founder of the Order by which Divine Service is performed in that church; and the other St. Jerome in his robes as a Cardinal. These are two beautiful figures; but the same may, indeed, be averred with truth of all in the work, which Daniello completed with incalculable pains and study, after having spent therein the space of seven years.

But paintings executed in this manner have always a something of laboured hardness, and the work in question is altogether wanting in that graceful facility which alone is capable of entirely satisfying the spectator. Wherefore, Daniello himself, admitting the pains which he had bestowed on the work, and fearing the censures to follow, which in fact he did not escape,—Daniello, I say, finished all by adding beneath the feet of the two Saints, partly from caprice, but partly also as a kind of defence, two smaller stories in stucco-work of basso-rilievo, wherein he designed to show that his imitation of his friends Michelagnolo Buonarroti and Fra Bastiano del Piombo, whose precepts and methods of action he did indeed closely follow, ought to suffice for his defence (even though his proceedings were laborious and slow), against the attacks of those envious and malignant persons whose evil nature often betrays itself when they least expect