Girolamo Mosciano of Brescia, after spending his youth in Rome, has executed many beautiful works in figures and landscapes, and at Orvieto, in the principal Church of S. Maria, he has painted two altar-pieces in oils and some Prophets in fresco, which are good works; and the drawings by his hand that are published in engraving, are executed with good design. But, since he also is alive, serving Cardinal Ippolito d'Este in the buildings and restorations that he is carrying out in Rome, in Tivoli, and in other places, I shall say no more about him at present.

There has returned recently from Germany Francesco Ricchino, likewise a painter of Brescia, who, besides many other pictures that he has painted in various places, has executed some works of painting in oils in the above-named S. Piero in Oliveto at Brescia, which are done with much study and diligence.

THE ADORATION OF THE SHEPHERDS
(After the painting by Gian Girolamo Bresciano [Savoldo]. Brescia: Palazzo Martinengo)
Alinari
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The brothers Cristofano and Stefano, painters of Brescia, have a great name among craftsmen for their facility in drawing in perspective; and, among other works in Venice, they have counterfeited in painting on the flat ceiling of S. Maria dell'Orto a corridor of double twisted columns, similar to those of the Porta Santa in S. Pietro at Rome, which, resting on certain great consoles that project outwards, form a superb corridor with groined vaulting right round that church. This work, when seen from the centre of the church, displays most beautiful foreshortenings, which fill with astonishment everyone who sees them, and make the ceiling, which is flat, appear to be vaulted; besides that it is accompanied by a beautiful variety of mouldings, masks, festoons, and some figures, which make a very rich adornment to the work, which deserves to be vastly extolled by everyone, both for its novelty and for its having been carried to completion excellently well and with great diligence. And, since this method gave much satisfaction to that most illustrious Senate, there was entrusted to the same masters another ceiling, similar, but small, in the Library of S. Marco, which, for a work of that kind, was very highly extolled. Finally, those brothers have been summoned to their native city of Brescia to do the same with a magnificent hall which was begun on the Piazza many years ago, at vast expense, and erected over a theatre of large columns, under which is a promenade. This hall is sixty-two full paces long, thirty-five broad, and likewise thirty-five in height at the highest point of its elevation; although it appears much larger, being isolated on every side, and without any apartment or other building about it. On the ceiling of this magnificent and most honourable hall, then, those two brothers have been much employed, with very great credit to themselves; having made a roof-truss for the roof (which is covered with lead) of beams of wood that are very large, composed of pieces well secured with clamps of iron, and having turned the ceiling with beautiful artistry in the manner of a basin-shaped vault, so that it is a rich work. It is true that in that great space there are included only three pictures painted in oils, each of ten braccia, which were painted by the old Tiziano; whereas many more could have gone there, with a richer, more beautiful, and better proportioned arrangement of compartments, which would have made that hall more cheerful, handsome, and ornate; but in every other part it has been made with much judgment.

THE HOLY FAMILY
(After the panel by Bramantino. Milan: Brera, 279)
Anderson
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Now, having spoken in this part of our book, up to the present, of the craftsmen of design in the cities of Lombardy, it cannot but be well to say something about those of the city of Milan, the capital of that province, of whom no mention has been made here, although of some of them we have spoken in many other places in this our work. To begin, then, with Bramantino, of whom mention has been made in the Life of Piero della Francesca of the Borgo, I find that he executed many more works than I have enumerated above; and, in truth, it did not then appear to me possible that a craftsman so renowned, who introduced good design into Milan, should have executed works so few as those that had come to my notice. Now, after he had painted in Rome, as has been related, some apartments for Pope Nicholas V, and had finished over the door of S. Sepolcro, in Milan, the Christ in foreshortening, the Madonna who has Him on her lap, the Magdalene, and S. John, which was a very rare work, he painted in fresco, on a façade in the court of the Mint in Milan, the Nativity of Christ our Saviour, and, in the Church of S. Maria di Brera, in the tramezzo,[4] the Nativity of Our Lady, with some Prophets on the doors of the organ, which are foreshortened very well to be seen from below, and a perspective-view which recedes with a beautiful gradation excellently contrived; at which I do not marvel, he having always much delighted in the studies of architecture, and having had a very good knowledge of them. Thus I remember to have seen once in the hands of Valerio Vicentino a very beautiful book of antiquities, drawn with all the measurements by the hand of Bramantino, wherein were those of Lombardy and the ground-plans of many well-known edifices, which I drew from that book, being then a lad. In it was the Temple of S. Ambrogio in Milan, built by the Lombards, and all full of sculptures and pictures in the Greek manner, with a round tribune of considerable size, but not well conceived in the matter of architecture; which temple was rebuilt in the time of Bramantino, after his design, with a portico of stone on one side, and with columns in the manner of trunks of trees that have been lopped, which have in them something of novelty and variety. There, likewise, was drawn the ancient portico of the Church of S. Lorenzo in the same city, built by the Romans, which is a great work, beautiful and well worthy of note; but the temple there, or rather, the church, is in the manner of the Goths. In the same book was drawn the Temple of S. Aquilino, which is very ancient, and covered with incrustations of marble and stucco, very well preserved, with some large tombs of granite. In like manner, there was the Temple of S. Piero in Ciel d'Oro at Pavia, in which place is the body of S. Augustine, in a tomb that is in the sacristy, covered with little figures, which, according to my belief, is by the hands of Agostino and Agnolo, the sculptors of Siena. There, also, was drawn the tower of brick built by the Goths, which is a beautiful work, for there may be seen in it, besides other things, some figures fashioned of terra-cotta after the antique, each six braccia high, which have remained in passing good preservation down to the present day. In that tower, so it is said, died Boetius, who was buried in the above-named S. Piero in Ciel d'Oro, now called S. Agostino, where there may be seen, even at the present day, the tomb of that holy man, with the inscription placed there by Aliprando, who restored and rebuilt the church in the year 1222. And, besides all these, there was in that book, drawn by the hand of Bramantino himself, the very ancient Temple of S. Maria in Pertica, round in shape, and built with fragments by the Lombards; in which place now lie the bones from the slaughter of the Frenchmen and others who were routed and slain before Pavia, when King Francis I of France was taken prisoner there by the Emperor Charles V.