mentioned. In the Umiltà[1] he then executed a painting entirely alone; on a large oval compartment of the ceiling namely, where he painted an Assumption of Our Lady, with other figures, a very lightsome, pleasing, and well considered performance.[2]
In like manner, belonging to our own time, is another good painter of that same city, Andrea Schiavone namely.[3] I call him good, because he has certainly produced many a good work, sometimes unhappily when in much want and distress.[4] Schiavone has always imitated the manner of good masters to the best of his power, but the greater part of his pictures have been painted for the houses of private gentlemen, and I propose to speak only of those wliich are public.[5] In the Church of San Sebastiano at Venice, and in the chapel
- ↑ A church which has been demolished.
- ↑ Vasari has spoken of Paul Veronese in the Life of San Michele, as our readers will remember, and mentions him frequently on different occasions, sometimes as a young man of much promise, again as surpassing all his competitors in some particular work, but always in terms of commendation. Bottari argues from this and other circumstances that Vasari frequently made additions to what he had previously written, as circumstances came to his knowledge, without giving himself the trouble to rearrange or re-write the life thus interpolated.
- ↑ Andrea Schiavone, whose surname was Medola, was a disciple of Titian. “He died,” remarks Baldinucci, “after a life of much suffering as well as much labour.” His works, by which the merchants enriched themselves, barely supplied himself with the means of existence. He was bom of poor parents at Sebenico in Dalmatia, in the year 1522, and dying at the age of sixty, was buried by the charity of his brother artists. There are three pictures by this master in the Bridgewater Gallery, and one in the Sutherland Collection. There are also two at Burleigh, which may be considered fair examples of his manner. Moschini, Guida di Venezia, tells us that in the Registers of the Academy he is called Andrea di Niccolò da Curzola; and in a print engraved by himself, and representing Heliodorus, we have the following inscription by his own hand, Andreas Sclavonus Meldola fecit.
- ↑ This passage has been sometimes differently construed, and Vasari is made to say (by his Italian commentators) that Schiavone ‘‘sometimes painted a good picture by mistake.” It is true that the text may bear such a reading, but we think that our readers, considering the history of the hapless artist, and the favourable opinion expressed of him by our author, will admit the reading adopted by the present writer to be the true one.
- ↑ Zanetti, Pittura Veneziana, remarks that the colouring of Schiavone was so much admired by Tintoretto that he kept a painting by that artist in his studio, and recommended others to do so, but he also advised them to draw better than their model, whose poverty had unhappily prevented him from studying design.
