you ought to do in order to make this
figure perfect." "Nay, but I beg you to do it, my lord," said Francesco;
and the Marquis added: "When you have your porter bound here, send for
me, and I will show you what you must do." The next day, therefore, when
Francesco had the porter bound in the manner that he wished, he sent a
secret summons to the Marquis, but without knowing what he intended to
do. And the Marquis, bursting out of a neighbouring room in a great
fury, with a loaded cross-bow in his hand, rushed towards the porter,
crying out at the top of his voice, "Traitor, prepare to die! At last I
have caught thee as I would have thee," and other suchlike words; which
hearing, the wretched porter, thinking himself as good as dead,
struggled in a frenzy of terror with the ropes wherewith he was bound,
and made frantic efforts to break them, thus truly representing one
about to be shot with arrows, and revealing fear in his face and the
horror of death in his strained and distorted limbs, as he sought to
escape from his peril. This done, the Marquis said to Francesco, "There
he is in the state that he ought to be: the rest is for you to do";
which the painter having well considered, made his figure as perfect as
could be imagined.

Francesco painted in the Gonzaga Palace, besides many other things, the
Election of the first Lords of Mantua, with the jousts that were held on
the Piazza di S. Piero, which is seen there in perspective. When the
Grand Turk sent one of his men with a most beautiful dog, a bow, and a
quiver, as presents for the Marquis, the latter caused the dog, the Turk
who had brought it, and the other things, to be painted in the same
Gonzaga Palace; and, this done, wishing to see whether the painted dog
were truly lifelike, he had one of his own dogs, of a breed very hostile
to the Turkish dog, brought to the place where the other one stood on a
pedestal painted in imitation of stone. The living dog, then, arriving
there, had no sooner seen the painted one than, precisely as if it had
been a living animal and the very one for whom he had a mortal hatred,
he broke loose from his keeper and rushed at it with such vehemence, in
order to bite it, that he struck his head full against the wall and
dashed it all to pieces.

[Illustration: GIOVAN FRANCESCO MORONE: MADONNA AND CHILD

(_London: National Gallery, 285. Panel_)]

Another story is told by persons who were present at the scene, of a
little picture