another is the Deposition of Christ from the Cross; the thieves also are in the course of removal, and there is a very ingenious complication of the ladders used for these purposes. The variety and beauty of attitude exhibited by the figures who are assisting each other to lower the body of the Saviour is very remarkable, as are the movements of other figures, who are bearing the body of a thief on their shoulders to its burial; these last are indeed extremely fine, and the whole of the work bears testimony to the excellence of the master.[1]
Visino was induced by the representations of certain Florentine merchants to proceed to Hungary, where he executed numerous works, and was very much esteemed. But the poor man was at first on the very point of coming to an evil end in that country, for, being of a frank disposition, and free-spoken habits, he could not endure the annoyance of listening to certain wearisome Hungarians, who were daily worrying him to death with the never-ceasing praises of their own country, and all appertaining to it, with which they filled his ears. To hear them, one would have thought that there was nothing either excellent or agreeable beyond the limits of their stifling stove-heated rooms, or out of the reach of their eatings and drinkings; that there was no grandeur or nobility but that of their king and his court, while all the rest of the world was a mere heap of rubbish. But Visino thought, and with reason, that in Italy and its products, a somewhat different kind of excellence and grace, and beauty were to be found. Wearied at length by these absurdities, and perhaps a little off his guard, he one day suffered words to escape him to the effect that a flask of Trebbiano[2] and a Berlingozzo,[3] were better and worth more
- ↑ The Deposition of Visino is lamented as lost by more than one of the Italian commentators, but we learn from a German writer that this work passed from the Doni family to the possession of the Marchese Manfredini, in whose fine collection at Rovigo it was long taken for a work of Andrea del Sarto, the nude parts more particularly being exactly as we find them in the works of that master. This collection was bequeathed by the Marchese to one of the public schools of Venice, an ecclesiastical establishment, of which the name escapes us, where the w^ork in question is supposed still to remain, but, in the absence of recent information, we do not affirm that it will now be found in Venice.
- ↑ The Trebbiano is a sweet white wine.
- ↑ A cake or tart.
