MELANCHOLY OF PAINTERS.
The following summary of the fortunes of painters is at once curious and interesting:—
“One must confess that if the poets were an order of beings of too great sensibility for this world, the painters laboured still more under this malady of genius. Zoppo, a sculptor, having accidentally broken the chef d’œuvre of his efforts, destroyed himself. Chendi poisoned himself, because he was only moderately applauded for the decorations of a tournament. Louis Caracci died of mortification because he could not set right a foot in a fresco, the wrong position of which he did not perceive till the scaffolding was taken away. Cavedone lost his talent from grief at his son’s death, and begged his bread from want of commissions. Schidone, inspired with the passion of play, died of despair to have lost all in one night. There was one who languished, and was no more from seeing the perfection of Raphael. Torrigini, to avoid death at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition, put an end to himself, having broken to pieces his own statue of the Virgin, an avaricious hidalgo, who had ordered it, higgling at the price. Bandinelli died, losing a commission for a statue; Daniel de Volterra, from anxiety to finish a monument to Henry IV. of France. Cellini frequently became unwell in the course of his studies, from the excitement of his feelings. When one sums up the history of painters with the furious and bloody passions of a Spagnoletto, and Caravaggio, Tempeste, and Calabrese, one must suppose all their sensibilities much stronger than those of the rest of mankind.”