[65] Vasari is by no means so bitter against the Venetian school as it is wished to make him appear. In regard to these pictures he declares, "that they are universally admitted, with justice, to be the best which were produced among many excellent masters, at different times, in that place." They are, therefore, preferred by him to the whole of the Florentine and Siennese paintings there exhibited; and his opinion is authorized by that of P. della Valle, who frequently differs from him. If it could be proved from history, as it may be reasonably conjectured, that Antonio was a painter when he came from Venice, and did not commence his art at Florence, he would merit the reputation of being the greatest artist of that school known to us; as well as of having conferred some benefit upon that of Florence, from the Venetian school. But this point is very doubtful.
[66] We cannot reconcile it to dates that Paolo Uccello was one of his scholars, having been born after the death of Antonio, if, indeed, there be not some error in regard to the chronology either of the master or of his pupil. Starnina might have been his pupil, as he is said to have been born in 1354; and, therefore, in 1370, he might possibly be one of his school. Yet it appears that Antonio had then renounced the easel. In his epitaph we find written:
Annis qui fueram pictor Juvenilibus, artis Me Medicæ reliquo tempore cœpit amor, &c.
(See Vasari ed. Senese, tom. ii. p. 297.)
[67] The old painters varied the manner of their superscriptions, even in the following ages, according to the taste of the Greeks. Sebastianus Venetus pingebat a. 1520; is written upon a St. Agatha in the Palazzo Pitti; and this corresponds to the ΕΠΟΙΕΙ, faciebat; by which the Greek sculptors wished to convey, that such work was not intended to exhibit their last effort; so that they were at liberty to improve it when they pleased. The subscription of Opus Belli is obvious, and similar ones, drawn from the ΕΡΓΟΝ, (for example,) ΛΥΣΡΡΟΥ which we see in Maffei. I recount in my fifth book as singular, the epigraph Sumus Rogerii manus; it is, however, derived from the Greeks, who, for instance, sometimes wrote ΧΕΙΡ. ΑΜΒΡΟΣΙΟΥ. ΜΟΝΑΧΟΥ, as I read in a Fabrianese church called Della Carità, where there is a picture of the General Judgment; the figures very small, and highly finished, upon a large tablet; with, I think, more figures than are seen in the Paradise of Tintoretto. ΧΕΙΡ ΒΙΤΟΡΕ, was written by Vittor Carpaccio, under his portrait cited in the index. I omit other forms better known. That adopted at Trevigi, Hieronymus Tarvisio, is very erudite; and it is imitated from the military latercoli, in which, with the same view, the soldier and his country are named. In short, where the words fecit or pinxit are not used, the best plan was that of giving the proper name in the genitive case at the foot of the picture, as the engravers of Greek gems were wont to do in inscriptions, as ΑΥΛΟΥ ΔΙΟΣΚΟΡΙΔΟΥ, &c.
[68] Pascoli, tom. i. p. 199.
[69] Vasari.
[70] Verona Illustrata, tom. iii. p. 277.
[71] Gloria is a name given in Italy to a representation of the celestial regions.
[72] Vasari.