Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/59

Rh the escutcheon three figures, besides several Children, which were much commended. Having completed that work, Battista next painted stories of Our Lady and of Jesus Christ, in a Chapel which had been constructed in the Church of the Minerva, by a Canon of San Pietro; and these, which were in a division of the vaulting, were the best paintings which Battista had then produced. On one of the two walls of the same Chapel he furthermore painted the Nativity of Our Saviour Christ, with the Shepherds, and a Choir of Angels singing above the hut or cabin wherein is the Divine Child; on the other, he depicted the Pesurrection of Christ, with numerous Soldiers standing in various attitudes around the sepulchre. Over each of the above stories there are lunettes, in which Battista painted colossal figures of Prophets; and, finally, on the wall behind the Altar, our artist represented Christ Crucified, with Our Lady, San Giovanni, San Domenico, and other Saints, in all which he acquitted himself well, and after the manner of an excellent master.

But his gains being small, and the expenses of living in Pome very great, Battista, after having executed some pictures on cloth, which had not much success, determined on returning to Yenice, his native place, thinking, perhaps, that by a change of abode he should also change his fortune. In Venice, his fine manner in drawing caused him to be esteemed an able artist, and he very soon received the commission for a picture in oil, to be placed in the Chapel of Monsignore Barbaro, Patriarch elect of Aquilea, which chapel was in the Church of San Francesco della Vigna. The subject of this work was the Baptism of Our Saviour Christ in the river Jordan, by St. John the Baptist; the figure of the Almighty Father is seen in the air, and beneath are two Children who hold the vestments of Jesus; in the angles is the Annunciation, and at the foot of the figure is the painted semblance of a cloth, beneath which are numerous small figures, all nude; angels, demons, and souls in purgatory namely, with a motto of which the words are as follow:—In nomine Jesus omne genuflectatur.

This work, which was reputed to be a good one, caused