tablet of marble, which was built into a
pilaster in the Church of the Servi, with the following epitaph, written
for him by the most learned Messer Piero Vettori, then a young man:

ANDREAE SARTIO
ADMIRABILIS INGENII PICTORI, AC VETERIBUS ILLIS OMNIUM JUDICIO
COMPARANDO,
DOMINICUS CONTES DISCIPULUS, PRO LABORIBUS IN SE INSTITUENDO SUSCEPTIS,
GRATO ANIMO POSUIT.
VIXIT ANN. XLII, OB. ANN. MDXXX.

After no long time, certain citizens, Wardens of Works of that church,
rather ignorant than hostile to honoured memories, so went to work out
of anger that the tablet should have been set up in that place without
their leave, that they had it removed; nor has it yet been re-erected in
any other place. Thus, perchance, Fortune sought to show that the power
of the Fates prevails not only during our lives, but also over our
memorials after death. In spite of them, however, the works and the
name of Andrea are likely to live a long time, as are these my writings,
I hope, to preserve their memory for many ages.

We must conclude, then, that if Andrea showed poor spirit in the actions
of his life, contenting himself with little, this does not mean that in
art he was otherwise than exalted in genius, most resolute, and masterly
in every sort of labour; and with his works, in addition to the
adornment that they confer on the places where they are, he rendered a
most valuable service to his fellow-craftsmen with regard to manner,
drawing, and colouring, and that with fewer errors than any other
painter of Florence, for the reason that, as has been said above, he
understood very well the management of light and shade and how to make
things recede in the darks, and painted his pictures with a sweetness
full of vivacity; not to mention that he showed us the method of working
in fresco with perfect unity and without doing much retouching on the
dry, which makes his every work appear to have been painted in a single
day. Wherefore he should serve in every place as an example to Tuscan
craftsmen, and receive supreme praise and a palm of honour among the
number of their most celebrated champions.

FOOTNOTE:

[6] Jacques de Beaune.

[7] There is here a gap in the text.

MADONNA PROPERZIA DE' ROSSI

LIFE OF MADONNA PROPERZIA DE' ROSSI

SCULPTOR[8] OF BOLOGNA

It is an extraordinary thing that in all those arts and all those
exercises wherein at any time women have thought fit to play a part in
real earnes