Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/548

536 in the carved wood-work of one of the chambers, I painted a large circular painting of God blessing the seed of Abraham, and promising the infinite multiplication of the same; on four pictures, moreover, which surround that just mentioned, I painted figures of Peace, Concord, Virtue, and Temperance.

Always delighting in and respecting the memory and works of the ancients, and perceiving that the method of painting in tempera has fallen into neglect, I felt a great desire to resuscitate that mode of delineation, and executed the whole work in tempera accordingly; a manner which certainly does not merit to be either despised or neglected. At the entrance to this chamber, I depicted, almost by way of jest, a Bride, who, with a rake in her hand, appears to have gathered up, and carried with her, whatever she could obtain from the house of her father; while, in the other hand, which is stretched before her, as she is about to enter the habitation of her husband, she has a lighted torch, by way of intimation that she bears with her, wherever she goes, a fire which consumes and destroys all things.

While I was thus passing my time, the year 1548 arrived, when Don Giovan Benedetto of Mantua, Abbot of Santa Fiore e Lucilla, a Monastery of the Black Friars, taking much pleasure in painting, and being a friend of mine, requested me to paint the Last Supper, or some work of similar kind, at the upper end of their Refectory. Desiring to do him pleasure, therefore, I thought over the matter, considering how I might best contrive something out of the common in that place; and taking counsel with the good father, it was determined that I should paint there the Marriage of the Queen Esther with King Ahasuerus: the picture, fifteen braccia long, to be in oil, but first to be fixed in its place, and afterwards executed. And this method (I, who have tried, can safely affirm it) is that which ought always to be adopted, if it be desired that the picture shall have its true and appropriate lights in all parts; seeing that to paint the picture in any other place, whether higher or lower than that where it is to be fixed, is to endanger the effect; since the lights, shadows, and other properties of the work are frequently much affected by the change.

In this picture then, I did my utmost to produce, an aspect of dignity and majesty; but am not myself the competent