well done that they are indeed a marvel. A brother of Maestro Girolamo, who is an exceedingly able master in works of cast metal, has also executed numerous undertakings in Rome, where he has laboured in company with Maestro Girolamo. Among these productions may more particularly be specified a very large Tabernacle in bronze, for Pope Paul III., which is to be placed in that chapel of the palace of the Vatican which is called the Paolina.
There have, in like manner, been at all times excellent masters in our arts among the Modanese, as we have remarked in other places, and as may be seen in respect of painting by four pictures which have hitherto received no mention at my hands, because I do not know by what masters they were executed. They were painted in tempera in that city, a hundred years since, and according to those times, are very beautiful, being finished with great care: the first is at the high altar of San Domenico, the others are in the chapels of the nave in the same church. There is also now living in that city, a painter called Niccolò,[1] who in his youth produced numerous works in fresco around the shambles which are tolerably well done;[2] he also painted a picture on panel, for the high altar of San Piero, a place belonging to the Black Friars, the subject being the Decapitation of San Piero and San Paolo.[3] In this work, and in the soldier who cuts off the heads of the martyrs, Niccolò imitated a similar figure of much-renowned beauty by the hand of Antonio da Correggio, and which is in the church
- ↑ Niccolò Abati, sometimes called simply Niccolino, but more commonly Niccolò dell’ Abate, not, as some authors affirm, because the Abbot Francesco Primaticcio made him known to the French, and contributed to the rise of his fortunes, but because, as Lanzi has shown, that was his family name. The life of this artist also was written by Zanotti, in loc. cit.
- ↑ Tiraboschi denies that Abati painted in this place, but it has been shown by the Cav. Gio. Battista Venturi, of Brescia, that he did work there, although only as the assistant of Alberto Fontana, to whom the commission for the paintings had been given.
- ↑ Or rather the martyrdom of those Saints, since they were not both beheaded. This picture is in the Dresden Gallery; it was engraved, according to Förster, by Folkena, for the description of that Gallery by Zucchi and Kilian.
