of Mantua, which he executed in competition with
others his compatriots, as has just been related.

[Footnote 12: Giolfino.]

And let this be the end of the Lives of the excellent Michele San
Michele and of those other able men of Verona, so truly worthy of all
praise on account of their excellence in the arts and their great
talents.

GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI, CALLED IL SODOMA

[Illustration: GIOVANNI ANTONIO (IL SODOMA): THE VISION OF S.
CATHARINE

(_Siena: S. Domenico. Fresco_)]

LIFE OF GIOVANNI ANTONIO BAZZI, CALLED IL SODOMA

PAINTER OF VERCELLI

If men were to recognize their position when Fortune presents to them
the opportunity to become rich, obtaining for them the favour of great
persons, and were to exert themselves in their youth to make their
merit equal to their good fortune, marvellous results would be seen to
issue from their actions; whereas very often the contrary is seen to
happen, for the reason that, even as it is true that he who trusts
only in Fortune generally finds himself deceived, so it is very clear,
as experience teaches us every day, that merit alone, likewise, if not
accompanied by Fortune, does not do great things. If Giovanni Antonio
of Vercelli, even as he had good fortune, had possessed an equal dower
of merit, as he could have done if he had studied, he would not have
been reduced to madness and miserable want in old age at the end of
his life, which was always eccentric and beastly.

Now Giovanni Antonio was taken to Siena by some merchants, agents of
the Spannocchi family, and his good fortune, or perhaps his bad
fortune, would have it that, not finding any competition for a time in
that city, he should work there alone; which, although it was some
advantage to him, was in the end injurious, for the reason that he
went to sleep, as it were, and never studied, but did most of his work
by rule of thumb. And, if he did study a little, it was only in
drawing the works of Jacopo della Fonte, which were much esteemed, and
in little else. In the beginning he executed many portraits from life
with that glowing manner of colouring which he had brought from
Lombardy, and he thus made many friendships in Siena, more because
that people is very kindly disposed towards strangers than because he
was a good painter; and, besides this, he was a gay and licentious
man, keeping others entertained and amused with his manner of living,
which was far from creditabl