It is true that in this immense space there have been placed but three pictures, which are in oil, and were painted by the elder Titian, but there might with good effect have been many more exhibited there, and the divisions might have been of better proportions, adorned with richer devices, and in every way more beautiful, and this would have imparted a more cheerful aspect to that hall, which in every[1]
Now having spoken, in this part of our work, of the artists who have flourished in the cities of Lombardy, it cannot but be fitting that we should also make mention of those belonging to Milan, the chief city of that province, of such of them, that is to say, as we have not before named, seeing that they, have been in question more than once in divers portions of this our book. Wherefore, to begin with Bramantino,[2] of whom some discourse has been made in the Life of Pietro della Francesca del Borgo:[3] I find that he has executed many more works than I have mentioned when speaking of this master on a former occasion; and, of a truth, I could scarcely suppose it possible that an artist so frequently cited, and to whom Milan is indebted for good design,[4] should have produced so few works, as those which were all whereof I could formerly obtain intelligence.
After having painted in Rome, then, as has been related, certain apartments for Pope Nicholas V.,[5] and finished that foreshortened figure of Our Saviour Christ, with the Virgin who is holding the Divine Child in her arms, and is accompanied by San Giovanni and the Magdalene, which is over
- ↑ Cristofano Rosa had a son named Pietro, who was a disciple of Titian, but died while still young in 1577, either of the plague or of poison. —Bottari. See also Lanzi, History of Painting (English Edition), vol. ii. p. 186, et seq.
- ↑ Bartolommeo Suardi, or Suardo, called Bramantino, from having been the disciple of the architect Bramante. See Passavant, in the Kunstblatt for 1838, No. 68. See also Lanzi, as before cited, vol. ii. p. 472, et seq.
- ↑ For whose Life see vol. iii. p. 13, et seq.
- ↑ The truth of this assertion has been much disputed, but the question is one which cannot be entered into in this place.
- ↑ It was not the present master, but his disciple, called Agostino Bramantino, that painted the rooms of Nicholas V. See De Pagave, Sienese Edition of Vasari.
