Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/194

182 done, and having acquired much knowledge under a certain Jacopone, he began to obtain some credit. His relative Francesco, who had behaved so cruelly towards him, then perceiving that he was becoming an able man, made friends with him by way of making use of his services, and the good Taddeo, who was of an excellent disposition, forgot all his wrongs, when these two agreed for a certain time, to work together. Taddeo therefore preparing the designs, and both together painting numerous friezes in fresco for chambors and Loggie, they did not fail to help each other considerably.

Meanwhile the painter Daniello da Parino, who had formerly worked many years with Antonio da Correggio, and had also had much intercourse with the Parmigiano, Francesco Mazuoli, had undertaken to paint in fresco a Church situate at Yitto beyond Sora, on the borders of the Abruzzi; with the Chapel of the Virgin in the same place. He therefore, being in want of an assistant, engaged Taddeo for that purpose, and took the latter with him to Yitto. And herein Daniello da Parino, although not the best painter in the world, was yet of great use to our artist, seeing that, having attained to mature age, and having also observed the methods of Correggio and Parmigiano, and the softness with which they finished their works, he had acquired so much facility of hand that showing those methods to Taddeo and instructing him by his words also, he did him service as we have said; nay, more perchance than he might have done by working before him. In this Church, then, Taddeo Zucchero painted the four Evangelists, two Sybils, two Prophets, and four Stories, of no great size, the subjects of which were taken from the Life of our Saviour Christ and the Virgin Mother.

Having subsequently returned to Rome, it chanced that a certain Roman gentleman, Messer Jacopo Mattel, was conversing with Taddeo’s kinsman Francesco Sant’ Agnolo in relation to a part of his house, which he desired to have painted in chiaro-scuro, when Francesco proposed Taddeo for that office, and on the gentleman remarking that he seemed too young, Francesco replied that a trial might be made of him in two stories, which, if they were not well done might be de-