ch, opposite to Boccaccino, some stories of Jesus Christ, which
are very beautiful and truly worthy to be praised.

[Illustration: THE MADONNA AND CHILD WITH SAINTS

(_After the painting by =Benvenuto Garofalo=. Ferrara: Pinacoteca,
1514_)

_Alinari_]

Now, after Benvenuto had been two years in Cremona, and had made much
progress under the discipline of Boccaccino, he went off in the year
1500, at the age of nineteen, to Rome, where, having placed himself with
Giovanni Baldini, a Florentine painter of passing good skill, who
possessed many very beautiful drawings by various excellent masters,
he was constantly practising his hand on those drawings whenever he
had time, and particularly at night. Then, after he had been fifteen
months with that master and had seen to his great delight the works of
Rome, he travelled for a time over various parts of Italy, and finally
made his way to Mantua. There he stayed two years with the painter
Lorenzo Costa, serving him with such lovingness, that Lorenzo, after
that period of two years, in order to reward him, placed him in the
service of Francesco Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, for whom Costa himself
was working. But Benvenuto had not been long with the Marquis, when, his
father Piero falling ill in Ferrara, he was forced to return to that
city, where he stayed afterwards for four years together, executing many
works by himself alone, and some in company with the Dossi.

Then, in the year 1505, being sent for by Messer Geronimo Sagrato, a
gentleman of Ferrara, who was living in Rome, Benvenuto returned there
with the greatest willingness, and particularly from a desire to see the
miracles that were being related of Raffaello da Urbino and of the
Chapel of Julius painted by Buonarroti. But when Benvenuto had arrived
in Rome, he was struck with amazement, and almost with despair, by
seeing the grace and vivacity that the pictures of Raffaello revealed,
and the depth in the design of Michelagnolo. Wherefore he cursed the
manners of Lombardy, and that which he had learned with so much study
and effort at Mantua, and right willingly, if he had been able, would he
have purged himself of all that knowledge; but he resolved, since there
was no help for it, that he would unlearn it all, and, after the loss of
so many years, change from a master into a disciple. And so he began to
draw from such works as were the best and the most difficult, and to
study with all possible diligence those