Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/412

400 ness of Messer Francesco Filetto, an orator of happy memory, with that of his son in the same picture, the last appears to be living, and the portrait is now in the possession of Messer Matteo Giustiniani, a lover of these arts, who has had his own likeness taken by the painter Jacomo da Bassano, a fine work, as are many others dispersed through Venice, and also by Bassano, who is particularly excellent in small pictures, and in the painting of animals.

Titian made a second Portrait of Bembo, when the latter had become a Cardinal that is; he also took Fracastoro, and the Cardinal Accosti of Ravenna, whose portrait the Duke Cosimo has in his Guardaroba. The sculptor Danese has the portrait of a gentleman of the Delfini family by this master in his possession; and Messer Niccolb Zono tells us that he saw the likeness of Rossa, the wife of the Grand Turk, a lady of sixteen, with that of Cameria her daughter, both by the hand of Titian, and wearing dresses and ornaments of great beauty. In the house of the lawyer, Messer Francesco Sonica, a gossip of Titian, is the portrait of that Messer Francesco by the hand of our artist, with a large picture, representing the Madonna in the Flight to Egypt; she appears to have just descended from the Ass, and has seated herself on a stone by the wayside; St. Joseph stands near, as does St. John, a little child who is offering to the Saviour the flowers gathered by an angel from the branches of a tree which is in a wood, wherein are numerous animals; the ass is browsing near. This picture, a very graceful one, has been placed by the Signor Francesco in a palace which he has built near Santa Justina in Padua.

For the Florentine Monsignore Giovanni della Casa, a man illustrious for learning as well as birth, our artist painted a beautiful Portrait of a gentlewom^ whom Della Casa loved when he was in Venice, and by whom the master was honoured for the same, with the exquisite sonnet which begins thus:— Ben veggo io, Tiziano, in forme nuove
 * L'idolo mio, che i begli occhi apre e gira.

As also with that which follows it.

This admirable painter likewise sent a picture of the Last Supper to the Catholic King; this work, which was