Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/547

Rh picture, and it was much praised by the Cardinal Capo di Ferro, then Legate of the Romagna.

Being then invited from Rimini to Ravenna, as I have said elsewhere, I painted a Deposition from the Cross, in the new Church of the Abbey of Classi, which belongs to the Order of the Camaldolines, and at the same time I executed numerous designs, small pictures, and other works of minor importance for many of my friends. These were indeed so numerous and so varied, that it would be difficult for me to remember even a part of them, while it might perchance be fatiguing to the reader to hear so many minutias.

The building of my house in Arezzo had meanwhile been completed; and, returning to my home, I now made the designs for painting the Hall, three chambers, and the fa9ade, principally by way of amusing myself through that summer In these designs I depicted among other things, all the places wherein I had myself laboured, as if they had in a manner brought tribute (by the gains which I had made through their means) towards the building of my house. But at that time I did not complete • more than the ceiling of the Hall (the wood work whereof is tolerably rich), adorning the same with thirteen large pictures, wherein are represented the Celestial Deities, while the nude forms of the four Seasons of the year are placed in the angles; they appear to be examining a large picture which occupies the centre, and presents a figure of Art trampling Envy beneath her feet, while she takes Fortune captive by the hair of her head, and strikes both with a staff. These figures are all the size of life; and a thing which then pleased many in this work, was the circumstance that. Fortune being in the midst, the spectator, in passing around the Hall, sometimes sees Envy surmounting Fortune and Art at one part, while at another part he sees Art surmounting both Envy and Fortune, as is known frequently to happen in real life.

On the walls around are Abundance, Liberality, Wisdom, Prudence, Labour, Honour, and other figures of similar character; and beneath them are stories of the ancient masters, Apelles, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Protogenes, and others, with varied compartments and other minutiae, of which, for the sake of brevity, I omit further mention. On the ceiling,