Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/68

56 tions of that light fall on various parts of the edifice. In addiction to these stories, there is a figure of San Marco on one of the altars, by the hand of the same artist, and which is also a tolerably good painting.

These works, then—with many others which I leave undescribed, because it shall suffice me to have made mention of the best—have been executed by Tintoretto with such extraordinary promptitude that, while people had been supposing him to have only just begun, he had in fact finished his performance. It is to be furthermore remarked, that this artist always contrives by the most singular proceedings in the world to be constantly employed, seeing that when the good offices of his friends and other methods have failed to procure him any work of which there is question, he will nevertheless manage to obtain it, either by accepting it at a very low price, by doing it as a gift, or even seizing on it by force. An instance of this kind happened no long time since, when Tintoretto, having painted a large painting on cloth and in oil, representing the Crucifixion of Christ, for the Scuola of San Rocco, the men of that Brotherhood then determined to have some magnificent and honourable work executed on the ceiling of the apartment, proposing moreover to give the commission for the same to such of the painters then in Venice as might be expected to do it in the best manner and after the most beautiful design.

They consequently sent for Giuseppo Salviati and Federigo Zucchero, who were then in Venice, with Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto, commanding that each of them should prepare a design, and promising that the work should be adjudged to him who should acquit himself the best. But while the other artists were giving themselves with all diligence to the preparation of their designs, Tintoretto made an exact measurement of the space for which the picture was required, and taking a large canvas, he painted it without saying a word to any one and with his usual celerity, puting it instantly