Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/492

480 place, he has made great improvement, and may now consider himself equal to any of the younger men of our Academy. Among other qualities in this youth which please men of knowledge, is that he is prompt, and performs his work without effort. In a picture which Battista has painted in oil for the Black Friars of the Abbey of Florence, he has represented a Story of Christ bearing his Cross, wherein there are many good figures, and he has now works on hand which will suffice to make him known as an able artist.

Not inferior to any of these in genius, talent, and worth, is Maso Mazzuoli, called Maso of San Friano, a young man, now about thirty or thirty-two years old, who acquired the first principles of his art under our academician Pier-Francesco di Jacopo di Sandro, of whom we have spoken elsewhere. This Maso, besides having shown us of what he is capable, and what may be hoped from him in many small pictures, has lately displayed two large paintings, which do him great honour and give universal satisfaction, since he has exhibited therein much invention, correct design, a good manner, infinite grace, and admirable harmony of colouring. One of these pictures, which is in the Church of Sant’ Apostolo in Florence, is the Nativity of our Saviour Christ; and in the other, which is in the Church of San Pietro Maggiore, and is as beautiful as it could have been if executed by an old and experienced master, we have the Visitation of Our Lady to St. Elizabeth; a work which does indeed display much forethought and judgment; the heads, the attitudes, the draperies, the buildings, every part of it, at a word, is full of beauty and grace. This artist, as one of our Academy, and a man of most obliging disposition, acquitted himself well in the obsequies of Buonarroti; and in the preparations made for the nuptials of the Queen Joanna, he distinguished himself very highly.

And now, as in the Life of Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, and other places, I have spoken of Michele, Ridolfo’s disciple, and, of Carlo da Loro, I will say nothing more of them here although they are of our Academy, having already mentioned them sufficiently.

But I will not omit to relate that Andrea del Minga, another of our academicians, who has performed and is per-