for medals, and in this, which has been adorned in ebony and ivory by a certain Francesco da Yolterra, who in that kind of work has not an equal, the Signor Cesare has a number of small figures in bronze, all antique, which could not possibly be more beautiful than they are. At a word, since the time when I formerly visited Mantua, and from that period down to this year of 1566, when I have seen it again, the city has been so richly adorned and been rendered so beautiful, that if I had not seen the change, I could not have believed it possible. And what is more, the artists have greatly increased their numbers, and are continually increasing them.
To the excellent sculptor and engraver of prints, the Mantuan Giovanni Battista for example, of whom we have already made mention in the life of Giulio Romano, and in that of Marcantonio Bolognese,[1] there have been born two sons, who engrave copper-plates divinely; nay, what is still more remarkable, he has a daughter called Diana, who engraves so admirably well, that the thing is a perfect miracle; for my own part, who have seen herself—and a very pleasing and graceful maiden she is—as well as her works, which are most exquisite, I have been utterly astonished thereby.[2]
Nor will I omit to mention that the above-named Mantuan artists have produced many works in San Benedetto of Mantua (which is a most renowned Monastery of Black Friars, and was restored in a very fine manner by Giulio Romano), as have also certain Lombard masters, to say nothing of those already enumerated in the Life of Giulio.
There are works by Fermo Guisoni, for example, in that place; a Nativity of Our Saviour Christ that is to say. There are two pictures, moreover, by Girolamo Mazzuoli, and three by Latanzio Gambaro da Brescia,[3] with three
- ↑ It would seem that Vasari did not know the Giovanni Battista, of whom he is now speaking, to be one and the same person with the Duke’s architect whom he has so lately cited, yet this fact would now appear to he placed beyond dispute.
- ↑ Diana Ghisi became the wife of Francesco Ricciarelli of Volterra, and has therefore subscribed herself in some of her engravings, Diana civis Volaterrana; in others, she signs herself simply Diana. Bartsch, Le Pientre Craveur, enumerates forty-six plates by her hand.
- ↑ A native of Brescia; he first studied, under Giulio Campo> in Cre-
