painted with the utmost exactitude: on one side was a highly burnished corslet, of which the figure had divested itself, and wherein the left side was reflected perfectly, every part of the figure being clearly apparent; and on the other side was a mirror, in which the right profile of the nude form was also exhibited. By this beautiful and admirable fancy, Giorgione desired to prove that painting is, in effect, the superior art, requiring more talent and demanding higher effort: he also shows that it is capable of presenting more at one view than is practicable in sculpture. The work was, indeed, greatly commended and admired as both ingenious and beautiful.
Giorgione likewise painted the portrait of Caterina, Queen of Cyprus, from the life, a picture which I formerly saw in the possession of the illustrious Messer Giovanni Cornaro. In my book of drawings, also, there is a head painted in oil by his hand, wherein he has portrayed a German of the Fugger family, who was one of the principal merchants then trading in Venice, and had his abode at the Fondaco, or Cloth Magazine of the Germans. This head is wonderfully beautiful, and I have, besides, in my possession other sketches and pen-and-ink drawings of this master.
While Giorgione was thus labouring to his own honour and that of his country, he was also much in society, and delighted his many friends with his admirable performance in music. At this time he fell in love with a lady, who returned his affection with equal warmth, and they were immeasurably devoted to each other. But in the year 1511 it happened that the lady was attacked by the plague, when Giorgione also, not aware of this circumstance and continuing his accustomed visits, was also infected by the disease, and that with so much violence that in a very short time he passed to another life.[1] This event happened in the thirty-fourth year of his age; not without extreme grief on the part of
- ↑ There is no mention of any plague prevailing in Venice during the year 1511, and, according to Ridolfi, the death of Giorgione was caused by despair at the infidelity of the lady here alluded to, and the ingratitude of his disciple Pietro Luzzo, of Feltre, called Zarato, or Zarotto, by whom her affections had been estranged from him. Lanzi, ut supra, vol. ii, p.l36, believes this Pietro Luzzo to be the Morto da Feltre, whose life Vasari gives us in the following pages.
