Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/238

226 pleasing to those who shall read this my work, to what I have already said I will add this also: While Taddeo was working, as we have related, at the Vigna of Pope Julius, and at the fa9ade of Mattiolo the Postmaster, he painted two pictures, of no great size, for Monsignore Innocenzio, the most Illustrious Cardinal di Monte; one of these, which is a very beautiful painting, is now in the Guardaroba of the Cardinal, with many other truly admirable works, ancient and modern; the other has been given away: but as regards the works here in question I will not omit to mention a picture which is as fanciful a production as any -whereof we have spoken.

In this painting, which is about two oraccia and a halt high, nothing is seen by him who regards it from the ordinary point of view, with the exception of certain letters on a scarlet ground, having the Moon in the centre of them; but if you approach the picture and look at it in a mirror, which is placed over the same in the manner of a canopy, you may clearly perceive the Portrait of Henry II., King of Prance, somewhat larger than life, and as natural as may be; if you lean your brow on the upper part of the frame and look thus at the work, you again see the King, but in the opposite direction to that given by the glass. Nor can this portrait be distinguished unless as thus regarded from above, seeing that it is painted on twenty-eight most slender ridges, which are raised between the lines of the above-mentioned letters. These words, too, have a second meaning besides that which appears at first view. If you look at either extreme of the lines or in the centre you shall find letters of larger size than the others, which altogether make the following inscription:—

Messer Alessandro Taddei, a Roman and secretary to the Cardinal, and my friend Don Silvano Razzi, who have given me information respecting this picture and many other things, assure me that they do not know from what hand it proceeds, but they say that it was given by Henry II. to Cardinal Carafia, when the latter was in France, and was