Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/548

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540
lives of the artists.

and 'beautiful as well as very much renowned work, but the architecture of the church is in the Gothic manner.[1] The church of Sant’Ercolino[2] was in like manner designed in this work, a most ancient building, rich in marble and stucco works, which are extremely well preserved, as are some vast sepulchral monuments in granite, which are also in that edifice. The church of San Pietro-in-Ciel d’Oro, at Pavia, has also a place among these designs: the body of Sant’Agostino is in the sacristy of this church, and is deposited within a tomb covered with small figures, which I believe to be by the hand of the Sienese sculptors Agnolo and Agostino.[3] The tower built of bricks by the Goths was in like manner there designed, and is a very beautiful thing, entirely worthy of such memorial, seeing that, to make no mention of many other ornaments, there are figures on this tower six braccia high, and made of terra-cotta, which have maintained themselves in very fair preservation, even to our own days.

It is said that in this tower died Boethius, who was buried in the above-named church of San Piero-in-Ciel-d’Oro, now called Sant’ Agostino, where his tomb is still to be seen, with the inscription which was placed on it by Alessandro, by whom the church was rebuilt and restored,[4] in the year 1222. Finally there was designed by the hand of Bramantino in this book the most ancient church of Santa Maria, in Pertica, a round structure erected by the Lombards with the spoils of war; here lie buried the remains of the French and others who were defeated and slain before Pavia, at the time when King Francis I. of France was taken prisoner by the army of the Emperor Charles V.

But now to leave these designs, I have further to relate, that Bramantino painted the façade of the Signor Giovanni Battista Latturate[5] in Milan, depicting thereon a figure of

  1. It was destroyed in 1537, and was rebuilt in a different manner.— Masselli.
  2. This should be Sant’ Aquilino. —Ibid.
  3. The tomb of Sant’ Agostino is by a master whose name has not yet been ascertained; it was commenced on the 14th of December in the year 1362. — Förster.
  4. Thus in the text:—Si edificò e restaurò.
  5. This house was the paternal abode of Bartolommeo Suardi, called Bramantino, nor is it known by what means it fell from the possession of