of San Giovanni Evangelista, at Parma.[1] Niccolò was more distinguished as a painter in fresco than in the other modes of painting, and in addition to the many works which he has produced in Modena[2] and at Bologna,[3] am told that in Prance, where he is now living, he has executed many admirable pictures, under Messer Francesco Primaticcio, Abbot of San Martino, after whose designs Niccolò has painted numerous works, as will be related in the life of Primaticcio himself.[4]
Giovan Battista,[5] a rival or competitor of the abovenamed Niccolò, has also produced numerous works in Rome and other places, but more particularly in Perugia, where he has painted several pictures from the life of the apostle St. Andrew, in the chapel of Signor Ascanio della Cernia, in the church of San Francesco; and in these paintings he has acquitted himself exceedingly well. In the same place, a picture in oil, representing the Adoration of the Magi, was painted, in competition with Niccolò Abati, by the Fleming Arrigo,[6] master in glass, and this would have been very beautiful had it not been somewhat confused and overloaded with colours, which destroy each other, and deprive what should be the principal figures of their due prominence. He has, how'ever, been much more successful in a glass
- ↑ This figure is in a Martyrdom of St. Piacidus, and his sister, St. Placida, called by some writers Santa Flavia. It is now in the Ducal Gallery of Parma, and has been engraved by D. Delfini.
- ↑ The frescoes executed by Niccolò at Scandiano, a Palace of Duke Ercole, are particularly extolled. See Venturi’s illustrations to the engravings of these frescoes, published by Guizzardi, Modena, 1821. There are works executed by Niccolò Abati, in company with Fontana, in the Palace of the Municipality also.
- ↑ The frescoes and other works of our artist in Bologna are likewise described in Venturi, as above cited. See also Zanotti, Pitture di Pellegrino Tibaldi e di Niccolò dell' Abate, Venice, 1756.
- ↑ Whose Life follows. See also Felibien, Entretiens sur les vies des Peintres, &c.
- ↑ Gio. Battista Ingoni, of a noble and once ancient family, but of no great repute as a painter. Vedriani, who wrote especially of the Modanese artists, Vite de' Pittori Modanesi, adds nothing to what Vasari tells us of Ingoni; indeed, he uses the very words of our author. Tiraboschi, in his notices of Modanese painters (in the Biblioteca Modanese), has mention of Ingoni, but little more.
- ↑ For certain details relative to the works of this Flemish master, see Della Valle, Storia deli' Duomo d'Orvieto, p. 331.
