Trajan, as he is represented on those medals which have the Province of Judea on the reverse. This picture also was sent to Maximilian, now Emperor.
For Cardinal Farnese Don Griulio has executed two other pictures; in one of these is a nude figure of Christ with the Cross in his hand: the second also represents Our Saviour, but here he bears the Cross on his shoulder, and is led by the Jews, who are accompanied by an immense crowd of people, to Mount Calvary. Behind him is Our Lady with the other Maries, in attitudes and with expressions that might move a heart of stone to pity. In two large plates, for a Missal, the artist has furthermore depicted for the same Cardinal, Our Saviour Christ instructing the Apostles in the Doctrines of the Gospel in the one, and the Last Judgment in the other. They are both so beautiful, or rather so admirable and amazing, that I stand confounded wlien I think of these works, and feel persuaded that there can be nothing in miniature, I do not say done, but even imagined, which could surpass them in. beauty.
In many of these works, more particularly in the Office of the Madonna, there are figures not larger than a very small ant, which yet have all the parts so distinctly drawn and so perfectly formed, that they could not be more correctly exhibited in figures the size of life; and there are besides innumerable portraits of men and women dispersed over these pictures, which are no less faithful likenesses than they might have been, had they been of the size of life, and proceeded from the hands of Titian or Bronzino. Some of the little figures in the frames also, whether draped or undraped, being painted in imitation of cameos, have all the effect of colossal figures, although so excessively minute: such was the extraordinary ability and enduring patience which Don Giulio exhibited in his works.[1]
Of these I have desired to give the world this notice, that such as cannot see those productions, for they are almost all in the hands of Princes or other great personages, may at least know something of them and of him. I say almost all, because I know some private persons who have small cases, containing beautiful portraits, by his hand, of Sovereigns, of their friends, or of ladies whom they have loved.
GG2
- ↑ A small round portrait of Don Giulio in oil, at a very advanced age, is in the Uffizj, but is not certainly known to be by his own hand.
