POLIDORO DA CARAVAGGIO AND MATURINO

LIVES OF POLIDORO DA CARAVAGGIO AND THE FLORENTINE MATURINO

PAINTERS

In the last age of gold, as the happy age of Leo X might have been
called for all noble craftsmen and men of talent, an honoured place was
held among the most exalted spirits by Polidoro da Caravaggio, a
Lombard, who had not become a painter after long study, but had been
created and produced as such by Nature. This master, having come to Rome
at the time when the Loggie of the Papal Palace were being built for Leo
under the direction of Raffaello da Urbino, carried the pail, or we
should rather say the hod, full of lime, for the masons who were doing
the work, until he had reached the age of eighteen. But, when Giovanni
da Udine had begun to paint there, the building and the painting
proceeding together, Polidoro, whose will and inclination were much
drawn to painting, could not rest content until he had become intimate
with all the most able of the young men, in order to study their methods
and manners of art, and to set himself to draw. And out of their number
he chose as his companion the Florentine Maturino, who was then working
in the Papal Chapel, and was held to be an excellent draughtsman of
antiquities. Associating with him, Polidoro became so enamoured of that
art, that in a few months, having made trial of his powers, he executed
works that astonished every person who had known him in his former
condition. On which account, the work of the Loggie proceeding, he
exercised his hand to such purpose in company with those young painters,
who were well-practised and experienced in painting, and learned the art
so divinely well, that he did not leave that work without carrying away
the true glory of being considered the most noble and most beautiful
intellect that was to be found among all their number. Thereupon the
love of Maturino for Polidoro, and of Polidoro for Maturino, so
increased, that they determined like brothers and true companions to
live and die together; and, uniting their ambitions, their purses, and
their labours, they set themselves to work together in the closest
harmony and concord. But since there were in Rome many who had great
fame and reputation, well justified by their works, for making their
paintings more lively and vivacious in colour and more worthy of praise
and favour, there began to enter into their minds the idea of imitating
the methods of Baldassarre of S