living with
a tranquil mind, he was attacked by a terrible fever, and, after he
had received all the Sacraments of the Church, finished the course of
his life, to the infinite grief of his wife and children, on the 11th
of July in the year 1551, at the age of about seventy-five. Having
been carried from that place to Urbino, he was buried with honour in
the Vescovado, in front of the Chapel of S. Martino formerly painted
by him; and his death caused extraordinary sorrow to his relatives and
to all the citizens.

Girolamo was always an excellent man, insomuch that nothing was ever
heard of any bad action committed by him. He was not only a painter,
sculptor, and architect, but also a good musician and a fine talker,
and his society was very agreeable. He was full of courtesy and
lovingness towards his relatives and friends; and, what entitles him
to no little praise, he laid the foundation of the house of Genga at
Urbino with his good name and property. He left two sons, one of whom
followed in his footsteps and gave his attention to architecture, in
which, if he had not been hindered by death, he was like to become
most excellent, as his beginnings demonstrate; and the other, who
devoted himself to the cares of the family, is still alive at the
present day.

A disciple of Girolamo, as has been related, was Francesco Menzochi of
Forli, who first began to draw by himself when still a child,
imitating and copying an altar-piece in the Duomo of Forli, by the
hand of Marco Parmigiano[7] of Forli, containing a Madonna, S. Jerome,
and other Saints, and held at that time to be the best of the modern
pictures; and he occupied himself likewise with imitating the works
of Rondinino[8] da Ravenna, a painter more excellent than Marco, who a
little time before had placed on the high-altar of the above-named
Duomo a most beautiful altar-piece, in which was painted Christ giving
the Communion to the Apostles, and in a lunette above it a Dead
Christ, and in the predella of that altar-piece very graceful scenes
with little figures from the life of S. Helen. These works brought him
forward in such a manner, that, when Girolamo Genga went, as we have
said, to paint the chapel in S. Francesco at Forli for M. Bartolommeo
Lombardino, Francesco at that time went to live with Genga, seizing
that opportunity of learning, and did not cease to serve him as long
as he lived. There, and also at Urbino and in the work of the
Imperiale at Pesaro, h