ARUN.
Death of Death's Painter.
—Most persons have heard of the story of an Italian painter who embodied the idea of Death on the canvass so truthfully, that the contemplation of it caused his own death. I always thought it was fabulous, till I met with it in the translation of Vasari's Lives of the Painters, vol. ii. p. 305., now being published in Bohn's Standard Library. The name of Fivizzano is there given to the painter, and the following epigram is said to have been inscribed beneath the picture:—
"Me veram pictor divinus mente recepit.
Admota est operi deinde perita manus.
Dumque opere in facto defigit lumina pictor,
Intentus nimium, palluit et moritur.
Viva igitur sum mors, non mortua mortis imago
Si fungor, quo mors fungitur officio."
Which may be thus translated:—