[55] He drew his head of San Niccolo a' Frari from a cast of the Laocoon; and from other models of the antique, that of S. John the Baptist, and of the Magdalen of Spain. From a Greek basso relievo he likewise copied the angels of his S. Peter Martyr. The same artist drew the Cesars, at Mantua, a work very highly commended, and impossible to have been so well executed without a knowledge of ancient sculpture, of which there yet exists a fine collection at Mantua. But what he drew from the antique, he also inspired with nature, the sole method of profiting by it, when a painter aspires to a higher character than that of a mere statuary. See Ridolfi, p. 171.
[56] Lamberto Lombardo, of Liege, is the artist whose life was written in Latin, by his disciple Golzio, a work edited in Bruges in 1565. In his youth he adopted the surname of Suterman, or Susterman, in the Latin tongue Suavis, and having likewise been an excellent engraver, his signature was sometimes L. L., at others, L. S. The whole of this account is to be met with in Orlandi, and other books. Yet Orlandi and the new Guide of Padua, acknowledge another Lamberti, also surnamed Suster, upon the authority of Sandrart, who mentions him, p. 224. According to Orlandi, this artist was the assistant to Titian and Tintoret, by whom he is first recorded as Lamberto Suster, and again as Lamberto Tedesco. The same author mentions a Federigo di Lamberto, whose name occurs in our first volume, (p. 268), likewise called del Padovano and Sustris, certainly from Suster, for which see Vasari and his annotators. These Lamberti, founded upon the diversity between the Liege and German names of Susterman and Suster, received upon the authority of Sandrart, not always very critical, are, I have reason to think, one and the same artist. For in Venice one Lamberto only is alluded to by Ridolfi, Boschini, and Zanetti, without a surname, but by the last held to be the same as Lombardo; and what signifies it, whether he was called Suster or Susterman, of Germany, or of Liege, in Italy.
[57] He is called by Vasari, Zanetti, and Guarienti, Bazzacco and Brazzacco da Castelfranco, and Guarienti makes him a scholar of Badile.
[58] They consist only of a few pages relating to the painters of Castelfranco. I cannot explain why Padre Federici (Pref. p. 17) supposes that I should have announced this as the MS. Melchiori, although Sig. Trevisani may have drawn various notices from that quarter.
[59] Padre Coronelli, in his Travels in England, (part i. p. 66), ascribes this picture to Paul Veronese, a mistake that is cleared up by the tenor of the contract, preserved in the archives of San Liberale. He adds that the picture contained a number of naked figures, to which draperies were afterwards adapted by another hand—an assertion wholly groundless.
[60] In a MS. by a contemporary author cited in the new Guide of Padua, he is called Domenico Veneziano, educated by Julio Campagnola.
[61] Thus stated in the Lettere Pittoriche, vol. i. p. 248. Recent writers of Friuli make him a native of Udine, a modern supposition, inasmuch as Grassi, a very diligent correspondent of Vasari, would hardly have been silent upon such a name. It took its rise, most likely, from the existence of a noble family of the same surname, in Udine, and from three of the artist's pictures having been discovered in the same place, one with the date 1595. Yet none are to be seen at Casa Frangipane, a circumstance very unusual in regard to excellent artists. We must look, therefore, for other proofs before we can pronounce him a native of Udine, and before we can assent to the conjecture of Rinaldis, who would admit two artists of the name of Niccolo Frangipane, the one a painter by profession, and the other a dilettante; and yet contemporaries, as appears from the authority of the dates of the pictures, already referred to.
[62] This fact cannot easily be refuted, in the manner attempted by Zaist, in his "Historical Notices of the Cremonese Painters," with true party zeal, p. 162. (See the New Guide of Milan, p. 139.)
[63] To these the name of Francesco da Milano has recently been added, on the strength of an altarpiece, quite Titianesque, exhibited with his name in the parish church of Soligo, to which is added the date of 1540]—time may probably clear up the mystery of this.
[64] He flourished several years subsequent, as appears from the New Milan Guide, with MS. corrections, by Signor Bianconi, of which the Cavalier Lazara has a copy. He there remarks that he had seen in the greater monastery, now suppressed, belonging to the nuns of San Maurizio, other paintings by Piazza; as Washing the Disciples' feet, in the Refectory, and the Multiplication of Loaves, upon canvass. Also within the interior church, among other scriptural stories in fresco, is found, the Adoration of the Magi, the Marriage of Cana, and the Baptism of Christ, bearing the date of 1556.