with him for two days, during which time attempts were made by certain of his friends to procure for him the commission for a picture which the men of the Hospital of Death had then to give. But notwithstanding these efforts, and although Salviati prepared an exceedingly beautiful design for the picture above-named, yet those men, as having but little judgment in such matters, did not know how to profit by the opportunity which Messer Domeneddio[1] had sent them of securing to the city of Bologna a work by the hand of so able an artist.
Finding this, Francesco left the place in some anger; but before his departure he deposited some very beautiful designs in the hands of Girolamo Fagiuoli, to the end that the latter might engrave them on copper and cause them to be printed.[2] Having arrived in Venice, he was very courteously received by the Patriarch Grimani and by Messer Vettor his brother, both of whom conferred on him many favours. After the lapse of a few days he received from the Patriarch a commission to paint a figure of Psyche in oil, within an octangular frame, four braccia in extent; in this picture incense and vows are offered to Psyche as to a goddess, in acknowledgment of her beauty, and the octangle was placed in a small apartment in the house of that Signore, the ceiling of the apartment having been adorned in its centre with festoons, by the hand of Cammillo Mantovana,[3] a painter, who, for the execution of landscapes, flowers, foliage, fruits, and objects of a similar description, was at that time considered most excellent.
The above-mentioned octangle was placed in a room of the Patriarch’s house, and was surrounded by four pictures, each two braccia and a half square, and all exhibiting stories from the Life of the above-named Psyche, which had been exe-
- ↑ I leave the untranslateable naiveté of this Messer Domeneddio in its original purity; no form of words in our own language could express the name of the Supreme Creator with equal simplicity, and at the same time avoid an unpardonable air of burlesque, which last would indeed be a wide departure from the meaning of our author, as well as a grave offence. Monseigneur St. Jacques and Madame La Sainte Vierge will occur to our readers as instances of the same kind of expression, all better left to their own forms of untransmutable simplicity.
- ↑ Mentioned in the Life of Soggi, for which see vol. iv.
- ↑ Named with praises in the Life of Genga, for which see vol. iv.
