Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/338

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330
lives of the artists.

come manifest among them: each seeks the reputation of being first, and labours to become chief in his turn: all, therefore, do their utmost to give proof of their ability. Of many, therefore, who flourished about the same time and in the same place, but respecting whom I could not discover, nor would it suit me to write, every particular, I now propose to speak shortly; to the end that, finding myself now at the close of this the second part of my work, I may not neglect and leave omitted any who shall have laboured to adorn the world by their works. But of these, I repeat, not only have I been unable to procure the entire history of their lives, but I have also found it impossible to obtain their portraits, that of Scarpaccia excepted, whom I have, on that account, made the head of the others. Let my reader, therefore, be pleased to accept such as I can offer, since I am not able to do all that I could wish.[1] There flourished, then, in the March of Treviso, and in Lombardy, taking a series of several years, Stefano V eronese, Aldigieri da Zevio, Jacopo Davanzo,[2] of Bologna, Sebeto da Verona, Jacobello di Flore, Guariero da Padova, Giusto and Girolamo Campagnuola, with Giulio, son of the latter; Vicenzio Bresciano, (of Brescia), Vittore, Sebastiano, and Lazzaro Scarpaccia, all Venetians; Vincenzio Catena, Luigi Vivarini, Gio Batista da Conegliano, Marco Baserini, Giovanetto Cordegliaghi, II Bassiti, Bartolommeo Vivarino, Giovanni Mansueti, Vittore Bellino, Bartolommeo Montagna of Vicenza, Benedetto Diana, and Giovanni Buonconsigli, with many others, of whom it is not needful that I should now make any further mention.

To begin with the first-named of these painters, then, I may remark, that Stefano of Verona, of whom I have already said some few words in the life of Agnolo Gaddi, was a more than tolerable painter of his time, and, when Donatello was working in Padua, as we have related in his life, and went, on a certain occasion among others, to Verona, he professed himself astonished at the works of Stefano, affirming that

  1. To give details respecting these masters would lead us too far, we shall for the most part content ourselves with intimating the writers, if any, by whom they are mentioned, so far as these writers may be within our knowledge.
  2. Whom Vasari shortly afterwards calls more correctly Avanzi.