Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/65

Rh width of the chapel, about twelve braccia each that is to say. In one of these our artist painted a perspective view, as of a large Hospital filled with beds, wherein the sick, who are receiving medical attendance from San Rocco, are lying in various attitudes: among these are certain nude figures which are very well done, with a dead body foreshortened, which is most admirable. In another is a story, also from the life of San Rocco, in which there are many very beautiful and graceful figures; the work is so good a one, in short, that it is accounted to be one of the best ever executed by that painter. In the centre of the above-named Church, moreover, there is a picture of almost equal size wuth those before mentioned, and likewise by the hand of Tintoretto. This represents Our Saviour Christ healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda, and is a work which is also considered to be an extremely good one.

For the Church of Santa Maria dell’ Orto, where the Brescian painters, Cristofano and his brother, painted the ceilino; as I have before related, Tintoretto executed the decorations of two walls, which will be found in the principal chapel, they are in oil, on cloth, and extend from the cornice above the seats, even to the ceiling, a height of twenty braccia that is to say. The picture on the right represents Moses returning from the Mount, where he has received the Laws from the hand of God, when he finds the people adoring the golden calf: and that on the left exhibits the Universal Judgment at the last day; the latter, an extravagant invention, which is truly fearful and terrible, in its diversity of figures which are of each sex and every age; the souls of the condemned, as well as of the blessed, are beheld in various parts in the distance. The boat of Charon is likewise depicted in this work, but in a manner altogether different from that of those usually seen, and of a beautiful as well as unusual form. Indeed had this fanciful invention been executed after a correct and well-regulated design, and if the painter had given due attention to each part and to