INE

(_After the painting by =Francesco Mazzuoli [Parmigiano]=. Parma:
Gallery, 192_)

_Anderson_]

Having finished these works, which were held by his old uncles to be out
of the ordinary, and even considered by many other good judges of art to
be miracles of beauty, and having packed up both pictures and portrait,
he made his way to Rome, accompanied by one of the uncles. There, after
the Datary had seen the pictures and appraised them at their true worth,
the young man and his uncle were straightway introduced to Pope Clement,
who, seeing the works and the youthfulness of Francesco, was struck with
astonishment, and with him all his Court. And afterwards his Holiness,
having first shown him much favour, said that he wished to commission
him to paint the Hall of the Popes, in which Giovanni da Udine had
already decorated all the ceiling with stucco-work and painting. And so,
after presenting his pictures to the Pope, and receiving various gifts
and marks of favour in addition to his promises, Francesco, spurred by
the praise and glory that he heard bestowed upon him, and by the hope of
the profit that he might expect from so great a Pontiff, painted a most
beautiful picture of the Circumcision, which was held to be
extraordinary in invention on account of three most fanciful lights that
shone in the work; for the first figures were illuminated by the
radiance of the countenance of Christ, the second received their light
from others who were walking up some steps with burning torches in their
hands, bringing offerings for the sacrifice, and the last were revealed
and illuminated by the light of the dawn, which played upon a most
lovely landscape with a vast number of buildings. This picture finished,
he presented it to the Pope, who did not do with it what he had done
with the others; for he had given the picture of Our Lady to Cardinal
Ippolito de' Medici, his nephew, and the mirror-portrait to Messer
Pietro Aretino, the poet, who was in his service, but the picture of the
Circumcision he kept for himself; and it is believed that it came in
time into the possession of the Emperor. The mirror-portrait I remember
to have seen, when quite a young man, in the house of the same Messer
Pietro Aretino at Arezzo, where it was sought out as a choice work by
the strangers passing through that city. Afterwards it fell, I know not
how, into the hands of Valerio Vicentino, the crystal-engraver, and it
is now in the possession o