Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/386

374 harmony that one might suppose them all done in one day: for this the artist merits high praise, as he does for having executed all a fresco, without ever touching them a secco, as so many now do.

The ceiling of this Gallery is also decorated with stuccowork and paintings by these and other young artists, but all after the designs of the Abbot, as is likewise the old Hall with a lower gallery which is over the Pond. This last is adorned with works of greater merit than any other apartment of the place, but to describe them fully would lead me too far. At Meudon, and in a vast Palace called the Grotto, belonging to the Cardinal of Lorraine, the Abbot Primaticcio has executed many decorations; the building is of such immense extent, it has so large a number of apartments, such extensive Loggie and so many stair-cases, public and private, that it resembles those edifices of the ancients which they called Thermes; but without descending to particulars, there is one apartment called the Pavilion, which is indeed most beautiful; among the decorations are rich cornices replete with fine figures, and the foreshortenings exhibited in this work are very fine. Fountains decorated with figures in stucco, ornaments in shell-work, and other marine productions, contribute to the beauty of the place, the vaulting being likewise beautifully adorned with stuccoes by Domenico del Barbiere, a Florentine painter, who has given much proof of ability, not in these reliefs only, but in design and colouring also. Another of our countrymen, called Ponzio, a sculptor, has likewise produced figures in relief for this palace, and has acquitted himself very creditably.

But the works here executed are so numerous that I must restrict myself to the mention of the principal ones produced by the Abbot, with the intent that I may show the distinction to which he has attained in design, in painting, and in architecture. Not that I would refuse the labour of describing them all, had I the minute information respecting them which I have of works executed here. The excellence