it. To this end our artist represented in one of these stories a crowd of Satyrs engaged in weighing legs, arms, and other members of the human form in a balance, making note of such as are of just weight, and referring all they find wrong, incorrect, or defective, to Michelagnolo and Fra Bastiano, who are holding judgment thereon.[1] In the other Story is Michelagnolo looking at himself in a glass, the signification of which is sufficiently clear.[2]
In the two angles of the outer arch, Daniello executed two nude figures in chiaro-scuro, which are equal in excellence to those presented by the other portions of the work. This last having been given to public view after the lapse of the long time we have specified, was upon the whole much commended, and admitted to be a fine as well as a difficult performance; Daniello being at the same time acknowledged to merit the name of an-excellent artist. Having completed this Chapel, the Cardinal Alessando Farnese caused the master to make a Frieze of much beauty in one of the rooms of his palace. In this chamber and three others of great size, which follow consecutively, rich ceilings had been prepared under the direction of Maestro Antonio da Sangallo; and here Daniello was now commanded to paint a story with figures on each wall, in addition to the frieze. The subjects chosen were a Triumph of Bacchus, a Hunting party, and other exercises of similar character; all which pleased the Cardinal greatly, and that prelate caused the artist to add the Unicorn in the lap of a Virgin, which is the impress of his most illustrious family, to the various divisions of the work. These labours caused the noble in question, who has ever been the friend of all able and disdistinguished men, to show much favour to Daniello, and he would doubtless have done even more for him had he not been so dilatory in his mode of working; yet this was not the fault of Daniello, seeing that such was his nature and genius; nor could he ever content himself with doing much and badly,
- ↑ This description is not strictly accurate. In one of these bassi-rilievi Satyrs are weighing, not detached limbs, but the actual figures represented in the pictures above, while other Satyrs are chasing the enemies of the painter from the place. The second basso-rilievo is no longer in its place. —Bottari.
- ↑ It signified namely that Michael Angelo beheld his very self re-produced in the pictures above, an import more likely to be “sufficiently clear” in Daniello’s day than in our own.—Ibid.
