n height, covered with foliage
and figures cast in the round, which are so well wrought that they are
things to marvel at. And a brother of Maestro Girolamo's, who is an able
master in similar works of casting, has executed many things in company
with him at Rome, and in particular a very large tabernacle of bronze
for Pope Paul III, which was to be placed in the chapel that is called
the Pauline in the Palace of the Vatican.

Among the Modenese, also, there have been at all times craftsmen
excellent in our arts, as has been said in other places, and as may be
seen from four panel-pictures, of which no mention was made in the
proper place because the master was not known; which pictures were
executed in distemper a hundred years ago in that city, and, for those
times, they are painted with diligence and very beautiful. The first is
on the high-altar of S. Domenico, and the others in the chapels that are
in the tramezzo[1] of that church. And there is living in the same
country at the present day a painter called Niccolo, who in his youth
painted many works in fresco about the Beccherie, which have no little
beauty, and for the high-altar of S. Piero, a seat of the Black Friars,
in an altar-piece, the Beheading of S. Peter and S. Paul, imitating in
the soldier who is cutting off their heads a similar figure by the hand
of Antonio da Correggio, much renowned, which is in S. Giovanni
Evangelista at Parma. Niccolo has been more excellent in fresco-painting
than in the other fields of painting, and, in addition to many works
that he has executed at Modena and Bologna, I understand that he has
painted some very choice pictures in France, where he still lives, under
Messer Francesco Primaticcio, Abbot of S. Martin, after whose designs
Niccolo has painted many works in those parts, as will be related in the
Life of Primaticcio.

[Footnote 1: See note on p. 57, Vol. I.]

Giovan Battista, also, a rival of that Niccolo, has executed many works
in Rome and elsewhere, and in particular he has painted at Perugia, in
the Chapel of Signor Ascanio della Cornia, in S. Francesco, many
pictures of the life of S. Andrew the Apostle, in which he has acquitted
himself very well. In competition with the above-named Niccolo, the
Fleming Arrigo, a master of glass windows, has painted in the same place
an altar-piece in oils, containing the story of the Magi, which would be
beautiful enough if it were not somewhat confused and overload