designs in stucco over the whole vaulting,
with scenes of figures in fresco, labouring there with incredible
diligence. But--whether it was his own carelessness, or that he had
executed some works, perchance on very fresh walls, as I have heard say,
at the villas of certain gentlemen--before he had that chapel finished,
he died, and it remained incomplete. It was finished afterwards by
Federigo Zucchero of S. Agnolo in Vado, a young and excellent painter,
held to be among the best in Rome, who painted in fresco on the walls at
the sides Mary Magdalene being converted by the Preaching of Christ and
the Raising of her brother Lazarus, which are pictures full of grace.
And, when the walls were finished, the same Federigo painted in the
altar-piece the Adoration of the Magi, which was much extolled.

Extraordinary credit and fame have come to Battista, who died in the
year 1561, from his many printed designs, which are truly worthy to be
praised.

In the same city of Venice and about the same time there lived, as he
still does, a painter called Jacopo Tintoretto, who has delighted in all
the arts, and particularly in playing various musical instruments,
besides being agreeable in his every action, but in the matter of
painting swift, resolute, fantastic, and extravagant, and the most
extraordinary brain that the art of painting has ever produced, as may
be seen from all his works and from the fantastic compositions of his
scenes, executed by him in a fashion of his own and contrary to the use
of other painters. Indeed, he has surpassed even the limits of
extravagance with the new and fanciful inventions and the strange
vagaries of his intellect, working at haphazard and without design, as
if to prove that art is but a jest. This master at times has left as
finished works sketches still so rough that the brush-strokes may be
seen, done more by chance and vehemence than with judgment and design.
He has painted almost every kind of picture in fresco and in oils, with
portraits from life, and at every price, insomuch that with these
methods he has executed, as he still does, the greater part of the
pictures painted in Venice. And since in his youth he proved himself by
many beautiful works a man of great judgment, if only he had recognized
how great an advantage he had from nature, and had improved it by
reasonable study, as has been done by those who have followed the
beautiful manners of his predecessors, and had not dashed