customed to hear mass, with a Deposition from the Cross, and with certain events from the life of San Lorenzo, which are admirable. The Pope further appointed him to execute the miniatures of several books, which are also extremely beautiful. In the church of the Minerva,[1] Fra Giovanni executed the picture of the High Altar and an Annunciation, Avhich is now placed against the wall beside the principal chapel. For the same pontilf. Fra Giovanni decorated the chapel of the sacrament in the palace, which chapel was afterwards destroyed by Pope Paul III., who conducted the staircase through it. In this work, which was an excellent one. Fra Giovanni had painted stories in fresco from the life of Christ, in his own admirable manner, and had introduced many portraits of eminent persons then living. These portraits would most probably have been lost to us, had not Paul Jovius caused the following among them to be reserved for his museum: Pope Nicholas V., the Emperor Frederick, who had at that time arrived in Italy; Frate Antonino, who afterwards became archbishop of Florence,[2] Biondo da Forli, and Ferdinand of Arragon.
And now, Fra Giovanni, appearing to the Pope to be, as he really was, a person of most holy life, gentle and modest, the Pontiff, on the archbishopric becoming vacant, judged Fra Giovanni to be worthy of that preferment; but the Frate, hearing this, entreated his Holiness to provide himself with some other person, since he did not feel capable of ruling men. He added, that among the brethren of his order, was a man well skilled in the art of governing others,
- ↑ The German commentators tell us that both the pictures of the Minerva are still in the church. One in the Caraffa chapel—that dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, the other in the chapel of the Rosary. The later Florentine annotators, however, say that the works in question are not now to be seen, but that one is believed to be concealed under an inferior picture in the chapel of the Rosary, having been thus covered, as is believed, at a time when “our most precious works of art were torn from us by strangers.”
- ↑ In this picture Fra Giovanni may very probably have painted the Frate Antonino, who might appropriately have place there as an eminent man, but certainly not in the Chapter House of St. Mark, where he appears with the distinctive characteristics of a saint; his name was doubtless substituted for that of the person originally delinaited by Fra Giovanni in the Chapter House, as a consequence of his canonization. See ante, p. 26, note †.
