of great importance, for the reason that when a
man begins by adopting a bad manner, it rarely happens that he can
abandon it without great difficulty, in order to learn a better.

[Footnote 7: Embroiderers.]

Giovanni, then, having been only a very short time under the discipline
of Giorgione in Venice, when he had once seen the sweet, graceful, and
beautiful manner of Raffaello, determined, like a young man of fine
intelligence, that he would at all costs attach himself to that manner.
And so, his brain and hand being equal to his noble intention, he made
so much proficience, that in a short time he was able to draw very well
and to work in colour with facility and grace, insomuch that, to put it
in a few words, he succeeded in counterfeiting excellently well every
natural object--animals, draperies, instruments, vases, landscapes,
buildings, and verdure; in which not one of the young men of that school
surpassed him. But, above all, he took supreme delight in depicting
birds of every kind, insomuch that in a short time he filled a book with
them, which was so well varied and so beautiful, that it was a
recreation and a delight to Raffaello. Living with Raffaello was a
Fleming called Giovanni, who was an excellent master in depicting
fruits, leaves, and flowers with a very faithful and pleasing likeness
to nature, although in a manner a little dry and laboured; and from him
Giovanni da Udine learned to make them as beautiful as his master, and,
what is more, with a certain soft and pastose manner that enabled him to
become, as will be related, supremely excellent in some fields of art.
He also learned to execute landscapes with ruined buildings and
fragments of antiquities, and likewise to paint landscapes and verdure
in colours on cloth, in the manner that has been followed after him not
only by the Flemings, but also by all the Italian painters.

Raffaello, who much loved the genius of Giovanni, in executing the
altar-picture of S. Cecilia that is in Bologna, caused him to paint the
organ which that Saint has in her hand; and he counterfeited it so well
from the reality, that it appears as if in relief, and also all the
musical instruments that are at the feet of the Saint. But what was of
much greater import was that he made his painting so similar to that of
Raffaello, that the whole appears as if by one and the same hand. Not
long afterwards, excavations being made at S. Pietro in Vincula, among
the ru