erspective-view or
scenery for a play, which was so beautiful that it would be impossible
to imagine anything finer, seeing that the variety and beautiful manner
of the buildings, the various loggie, the extravagance of the doors and
windows, and the other architectural details that were seen in it, were
so well conceived and so extraordinary in invention, that one is not
able to describe the thousandth part.
For the house of Messer Francesco di Norcia, on the Piazza de' Farnesi,
he made a very graceful door of the Doric Order; and for Messer
Francesco Buzio he executed, near the Piazza degl' Altieri, a very
beautiful facade, in the frieze of which he painted portraits from life
of all the Roman Cardinals who were then alive, while on the wall itself
he depicted the scenes of Caesar receiving tribute from all the world,
and above he painted the twelve Emperors, who are standing upon certain
corbels, being foreshortened with a view to being seen from below, and
wrought with extraordinary art. For this whole work he rightly obtained
vast commendation. In the Banchi he executed the escutcheon of Pope Leo,
with three children, that seemed to be alive, so tender was their flesh.
For Fra Mariano Fetti, Friar of the Piombo, he made a very beautiful S.
Bernard in terretta in his garden at Montecavallo. And for the Company
of S. Catherine of Siena, on the Strada Giulia, in addition to a bier
for carrying the dead to burial, he executed many other things, all
worthy of praise. In Siena, also, he gave the design for the organ of
the Carmine; and he made some other works in that city, but none of much
importance.
Later, having been summoned to Bologna by the Wardens of Works of S.
Petronio, to the end that he might make the model for the facade of that
church, he made for this two large ground-plans and two elevations, one
in the modern manner and the other in the German; and the latter is
still preserved in the Sacristy of the same S. Petronio, as a truly
extraordinary work, since he drew that building in such sharply-detailed
perspective that it appears to be in relief. In the house of Count
Giovan Battista Bentivogli, in the same city, he made several drawings
for the aforesaid structure, which were so beautiful, that it is not
possible to praise enough the wonderful expedients sought out by this
man in order not to destroy the old masonry, but to join it in beautiful
proportion with the new. For the Count Giovan Battista men
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