which he saw around him, Francia felt as one terrified and half deprived of life: he was, indeed, utterly confounded, but, nevertheless, caused the painting to be placed, with all care and diligence, in the chapel for which it was intended in the church of San Giovanni-in-Monte; but, having become like a man beside himself, he took to his bed a few days after, appearing to himself to be now almost as nothing in art, when compared with what he had believed himself, and what he had always been considered. Thus he died, as many believe,[1] of grief and vexation, incurring the same fate from so earnestly contemplating the living picture of Raphael, as that w'hich befell Fivizzano, from too fixedly regarding his own beautiful painting of Death,[2] and on which the following epigram was composed:—
Me veram pictor divinm mente recepit.
Admota est operi deinde perita manus.
Diimque opere in facto defigit lumina pictor,
Intentus nimium, palluit et moritur.
Viva igitur sum mors, non mortua mortis imago
Si fungor, quo mors fungitur officio.
There are, nevertheless, many who declare his death to have been so sudden as to give rise to the belief, which was confirmed by various appearances, that it was caused by poison, or apoplexy, rather than anything else.[3] Francia was a man of great prudence: he led a most regular life, and was of a robust constitution. At his death, in the year 1518,[4] he received honourable interment from his sons in Bologna. .
- ↑ Here Vasari evidently intends to weaken the force of what he has previously said in respect to the death of Francia.
- ↑ Della Valle and other Italian writers think this should be read la sua berlla morta. The picture of a beautiful woman that is to say, lying dead, rather than his “beautiful painting of Death,” as Vasari’s words would imply.
- ↑ The uncertainty here expressed, gives further proof thac the previous narration was founded on no authentic information.
- ↑ 1517, as we have said.—See ante, p. 301, note (†)
