Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/453

others of whom it is not needful that I should now make mention.

And now, as I shall not have again to speak of the Veronese, or of Verona, for some time, I will take the occasion here presented to make mention of certain painters belonging to that country, who are still living, and are so entirely worthy of being named that they are on no account to be passed over in silence.

The first of these is Domenico del Riccio,^[1] who has painted three fat^ades of the house of Fiorio di Seta, which is situate above the Ponte Nuovo in Verona, those three namely which do not look on the bridge—Fiorio’s house standing entirely apart from all other buildings. The work, which is in fresco, is executed partly in chiaro-scuro and partly in colours. On the front, which looks towards the river, are combats of marine monsters; on another are battles of the Centaurs, with certain of the Italian rivers; and the third has two coloured pictures, the subject of one, which is over the door, being a Feast of the Gods, and that of the other, the fable of a Marriage between the Benacus (that is the Lago di Garda) and the Nymph of the Lake, Caris, from which marriage it is fabled was derived the birth of the river Mincio, which does in fact rise from the Lago di Garda.^[2] In the same house is a large frieze in various colours by the hand of Riccio, and painted in a good manner.^[3]

In the house of Messer Pellegrino de’ Ridolfi, which is also in Verona, the same artist painted the Coronation of the Emperor Charles V. and a second picture showing the same Monarch, when after his coronation he rides with the sovereign Pontiff in great pomp through Bologna. ^[4] In oil Domenico di Riccio has painted the principal picture in the

greater part of what he has here given in relation to the Veronese artists from his hand.

1. Mentioned in the Life of Valerio Vicentino. See vol. iii. p. 467.
2. An engraving of this part of the work here in question will be found in Panvinius, Antiquitates Veronensis, lib. vii. p. 204.
3. Persico, Descrizione di Verona, has given an exact description of these works, and to him our readers are referred for details which cannot here find place.
4. This work also is described in Persico, as above cited, and was engraved, with some omissions, in the year 1701, bv command of the Cardinal Carrara.