Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/44

32 which had rendered the work in the first instance so perfectly beautiful.

Having completed these labours, and being now in his seventieth year, Giovanni finished the course of his life also: he died in the year 1564, rendering up his soul to God in that most noble city which had for so many years furnished him with the means of living in honour and with so great a name. Giovanni was always, but more especially towards the close of his life, a man who feared God, and was a good Christian. In his youth he had permitted himself few pleasures, those of hunting and fowling excepted, and while still young it was his custom to repair, on all festival days, with a servant of his, to the chase, sometimes going across the country to a distance of ten miles from Rome: he was, indeed, so successful in shooting with the short gun, or the cross-bow, that he seldom returned home without havins: first laden his servant with wild-ducks, pigeons, and every other kind of animal to be found in those marshy places. Giovanni was indeed the inventor, as it is said, of the screen formed of a figure of an ox painted on canvas, and behind which the sportsman can fire his piece without being discovered by the object aimed at: his love of fowling and of the chase caused him also to delight in dogs, many of which he reared himself.

This artist, who merits to be extolled among the greatest of his vocation, desired to be buried in the Ritondo, near his master Ratfaello da Urbino, that he might not be divided in death from him whom his spirit never willingly abandoned in life; and since both of these masters were excellent Christians, as we have said, so we may believe that they are now met together in eternal blessedness.