me friar painted the
beautiful Last Supper that is in the refectory of the very rich abbey
which the Monks of S. Benedict possess in the territory of Mantua. In S.
Domenico he painted the altar of the Rosary; and in the Convent of S.
Anastasia, in Verona, he painted in fresco the Madonna, S. Remigio the
Bishop, and S. Anastasia; with a Madonna, S. Dominic, and S. Thomas
Aquinas, all executed with mastery, on a little arch over the second
door of entrance in the second cloister.

[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION

(_After the painting by =Giovan Francesco Morone=. Verona: S.
Bernardino_)

_Alinari_]

Fra Girolamo was a person of great simplicity, wholly indifferent to the
things of the world. He lived in the country, at a farm belonging to his
convent, in order to avoid all noise and disturbance, and the money sent
to him in return for his works, which he used for buying colours and
suchlike things, he kept in a box without a cover, hung from the ceiling
in the middle of his chamber, so that all who wished could take some;
and in order not to have the trouble of thinking every day what he
was to eat, he used to cook a pot of beans every Monday to last him the
whole week.

When the plague came to Mantua and the sick were abandoned by all, as
happens in such cases, Fra Girolamo, with no other motive but the purest
love, would never desert the poor plague-stricken monks, and even tended
them all day long with his own hands. And thus, careless of his life for
the love of God, he became infected with that malady and died at the age
of sixty, to the great grief of all who knew him.

But to return to Francesco Monsignori: he painted a life-size portrait,
which I forgot to mention above, of Count Ercole Giusti of Verona, in a
robe of cloth of gold, such as he was wont to wear; and this is a very
beautiful likeness, as may be seen in the house of his son, Count
Giusto.

Domenico Morone, who was born at Verona about the year 1430, learned the
art of painting from some masters who were disciples of Stefano, and
from works by the same Stefano, by Jacopo Bellini, by Pisano, and by
others, which he saw and copied. Saying nothing of the many pictures
that he executed after the manner of those times, which are now in
monasteries and private houses, I begin by recording that he painted in
chiaroscuro, with "terretta verde," the facade of a house belonging to
the city of Verona, on the square called the Piazza de' Signori; and in
t