A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF
On the sacking of Rome in 1527, compelled to flee from the capital, and plundered of all he possessed, Perino took refuge in Genoa, where he was graciously received by Prince Doria, who employed him to decorate his palace, near the gate of St. Thomas. It was upon this occasion that Perino displayed the extent of his powers and the fecundity of his invention ; and it has been made a matter of dispute whether the decorations of the Palazzo del Te at Mantua, by Giulio Romano, or those of the Doria Palace at Genoa, by Del Vaga, do more honour to the great school in which they were educated. In one of the apartments Perino represented Jupiter destroying the Giants; and in others, several subjects from Roman history and the Metamorphoses of Ovid. He also designed a series of cartoons of the History of Æneas. These frescoes, which were in a great measure executed from his designs by his assistants, have nearly perished owing to time and whitewash. After a stay of some years at Genoa, Perino returned to Rome, where he was employed by Pope Paul III. Towards tlie close of his life, his pictures were in such request that he merely made the designs, leaving the execution of them to his pupils, among whom may be mentioned Pantaleo Calvi and Lazzaro, painters of no great merit. Perino died at Rome in 1547—it is said that he hastened his end by intemperance—and was buried by the side of Raphael and other great masters in the old Pantheon. His pictures are occasionally seen in the Galleries of Europe, but they are not very important. The Duke of Devonshire has drawings by him, and a portrait of Cardinal Pole is at Althorp.
BUONAMICI, Agostino, called A. Tassi (or Tassy), was born at Perugia in 1565, and studied at Rome under Paul Bril, although he was desirous of being considered a disciple of the Carracci. He painted landscapes in the style of his instructor, and of Donducci, and was considered one of the ablest artists of his time. Lanzi informs us that
for some crime, which is not mentioned, he was
Bent to the galleys at Leghorn. During the term
of his confinement he occupied himself in designing the maritime objects with which he was surrounded, and after his liberation they became the favourite subjects of his pictures. He painted with great success sea-ports and calms, with shipping and fishing-boats. His tempests and storms
at sea were not less happily represented, and were
touched with unusual spirit and energy. He also
excelled in architectural and perspective views, in
which he distinguished himself by some admirable
productions in the pontifical palace of Monte Cavallo, and in the Palazzo Lancellotti. He was one
of the first to copy arabesques from the antique,
and employ them as borders. Agostino Tassi has
the credit of having been the instructor of Claude
Lorrain. lie died at Rome in 1644. We have a
few slight but spirited etchings by this artist, representing storms at sea and shipwrecks.
BUONAMICO, Cristofani, (called Buffalmacco,) who was born in 1262, was a pupil of Andrea Tafi. Rumohr and Kugler and many other writers have doubted his existence, but his name has been discovered in the register of the Florentine Company of Painters, with the date 1351 ('Crowe and Cavalcaselle,' vol. i. p. 387, note). Boccaccio nicknames him Buffalraacco, and some suppose that the Buonamico, used by Ghiberti, is a nickname abo. Vasari mentions many works by Buffalmacco, few of which still remain, and of these the majority are said to be by other artists. He adds that Buffalmacco, when he chose, could paint as well as any of his contemporaries. Most absurd stories have been related of this artist by Vasari, and by Boccaccio in his 'Decameron.' He seems to have been a man with a keen sense of humour. Vasari states that he died in 1340, but Baldinucci says that he was still living in 1351, as indeed the entry in the register of the Florentine Painters proves.
BUONARROTI, Michelangelo. Michelangelo, the supreme master of Italian art, was born at Castel Caprese, a small fortified town near Florence, on March 6, 1475. The family of Buonarroti was an old one in Italy, but Condivi's statement as to Michelangelo's descent from the Counts of Canossa is not found to be supported by genealogical evidence, though Michelangelo and Count Allessandro da Carnossa pleased themselves with believing it. His father Lodovico, son of Leonardo Buonarroti Simoni, was acting at the time of his son's birth as Podestà, or chief magistrate of Caprese, but he was soon after recalled to Florence, where, after a babyhood spent at Settignano under the care of a stone-mason's wife, the little Michelangelo was brought up, receiving education at a grammar school kept by a certain Francesco da Urbino.
His passion for art was early evinced. He had imbibed it, he was wont to declare, "with his nurse's milk"; at all events it could not be overcome even by blows, which it is said were sometimes tried, and by the time he was thirteen his father, giving up all hope of inducing him to follow the more profitable woollen trade, wisely acceded to his desire for art, and no doubt did the best he could for him by apprenticing him for three years from the 1st of April, 1488, to the painters Domenico and David Ghirlandaio, whose school was at that time the best in Florence. It appears by the terms of his apprenticeship that the young Michelangelo must even then have known sufficient to be useful to his masters, for they undertook to pay him a small sum during the first year of his apprenticeship, which was not usual. Very soon his progress was so great that, according to Vasari, it excited Ids master's envy, who exclaimed once on seeing a drawing made by Michelangelo of some scaffolding in Santa Maria Novella, "This boy knows more than I do;" "standing in amaze," aids Vasari, "at the originality of manner which Heaven had bestowed on such a mere child." His first painting is said to have been an excellent copy of Martin Schongauer's celebrated print of 'The Temptation of St. Anthony,' in which the details of the devil-forms were coloured from marine creatures studied in the fish-market, and he probably copied other forms with equal skill. But although educated in a school of painting, it is probable that he early showed some impulse towards sculpture, or Domenico Ghirlandaio would scarcely have presented him, as he did before his apprenticeship was out, to Lorenzo de Medici, who at that time had just founded a school of sculpture, of which Bertoldo, the foreman of Donatello, was keeper, in the garden of his villa. Michelangelo was admitted to this Medicean school or Academy of Art in 1489, and achieved as one of his first works in marble the remarkable 'Mask of a Faun,' a copy from the antique, concerning which Vasari relates the story of Lorenzo pointing out to the young sculptor that old people seldom retain all
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