Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/281

Domenico would not refuse to abandon his native place, where there are so many admirable works from his hand, since he was called on to serve so great a prince; but he did not execute more than one picture in Genoa,^[1] because Perino brought all the rest to completion with his own hand.

Giovan Antonio then returned to Venice,^[2] where he was given to understand that Ercole, duke of Ferrara, had brought a large number of masters from Germany to the last-named city, and had caused them to commence the weaving of various stufi's in silk, gold, spun-silk, and wool, according to his own fancy and for his use; but that there was a lack of good designers of figures in Ferrara, seeing that Girolamo da Ferrara^[3] was better versed in the taking of portraits and such matters, than in the composition of difficult stories, for which all the resources of art and power of design were requisite. It was therefore intimated to Pordenone that he might do well to enter the service of that prince, and he, being no less anxious to acquire fame than to obtain riches, departed from Venice, and when he arrived at Ferrara was received by the duke with much kindness.

But a short time after his arrival in that city, Pordenone was assailed by a very grievous disease of the chest, which forced him to lay himself half dead in his bed; when the malady becoming continually worse, and no remedy being found for his sufferings, in three days or something more, he finished the course of his life, at the age of fifty-six years.^[4] This appeared to the duke to be a strange thing, as it did to many of Pordenone’s friends, and for many months there were not wanting numerous persons who believed that he had died of poison. The body of Giovanni Antonio was

commentator, “that the merit of Beccafumi was so greatly superior to that of Pordenone.”

1. The works executed there by Pordenone and Beccafumi have alike perished.
2. Vasari omits to mention here the pictures painted by Pordenone in the Cathedral of Cremona, but names them hereafter in the life of Girolamo da Carpi.
3. Girolamo da Carpi.
4. Ridolfi gives the same age, but Maniago, Storia delle Belle Arti Friulesi, and the Giunti edition of Vasari, make l?ordenone fifty-nine at the time of his death.