asurements or the proportions of a
column or of any Order of architecture, as is evident from the buildings
that were erected before his day. This knowledge was afterwards much
increased by Fra Giocondo, who lived about the same time, and it
received its final perfection from Messer Michele San Michele, insomuch
that those parts are therefore under an everlasting obligation to the
people of Verona, in which city were born and lived at one and the same
time these three most excellent architects. To them there then succeeded
Sansovino, who, not resting content with architecture, which he found
already grounded and established by the three masters mentioned above,
also brought thither sculpture, to the end that by its means their
buildings might have all the adornments that were proper to them. And
for this a debt of gratitude--if one may use such a word--is due to the
ruin of Rome, by reason of which the masters were dispersed over many
places and the beauties of these arts communicated throughout all
Europe.

Giovan Maria caused some works in stucco to be carried out in Venice,
and taught the method of executing them. Some declare that when he was a
young man he had the vaulting of the Chapel of the Santo, at Padua,
decorated with stucco by Tiziano da Padova and many others, and also had
similar works executed in the house of the Cornari, which are very
beautiful. He taught his work to two of his sons, Ottaviano, who was,
like himself, also a painter, and Provolo. Alessandro, his third son,
worked in his youth at making armour, and afterwards adopted the calling
of a soldier; he was three times victor in the lists, and finally, when
a captain of infantry, died fighting valiantly before Turin in Piedmont,
having been wounded by a harquebus-ball.

Giovan Maria, on his part, after being crippled by gout, finished the
course of his life at Padua, in the house of the aforesaid Messer Luigi
Cornaro, who always loved him like a brother, or rather, like his own
self. And to the end that there might be no separation in death between
the bodies of those whose minds had been united together in the world by
friendship and love of art, Messer Luigi had intended that Giovan Maria
should be laid to rest beside himself in the tomb that was to be erected
for his own burial, together with that most humorous poet, Ruzzante, his
very familiar friend, who lived and died in his house; but I do not know
whether this design of the illustrious