ccentric, and was assailed by
a grievous fever and a cruel flux, which in a few days caused him to
pass to a better life. And in this way he found an end to the troubles
of this world, which was never known to him save as a place full of
annoyances and cares. He wished to be laid to rest in the Church of the
Servite Friars, called La Fontana, one mile distant from Casal Maggiore;
and he was buried naked, as he had directed, with a cross of cypress
upright on his breast. He finished the course of his life on the 24th of
August, in the year 1540, to the great loss of art on account of the
singular grace that his hands gave to the pictures that he painted.

Francesco delighted to play on the lute, and had a hand and a genius so
well suited to it that he was no less excellent in this than in
painting. It is certain that if he had not worked by caprice, and had
laid aside the follies of the alchemists, he would have been without a
doubt one of the rarest and most excellent painters of our age. I do not
deny that working at moments of fever-heat, and when one feels
inclined, may be the best plan. But I do blame a man for working little
or not at all, and for wasting all his time over cogitations, seeing
that the wish to arrive by trickery at a goal to which one cannot
attain, often brings it about that one loses what one knows in seeking
after that which it is not given to us to know. If Francesco, who had
from nature a spirit of great vivacity, with a beautiful and graceful
manner, had persisted in working every day, little by little he would
have made such proficience in art, that, even as he gave a beautiful,
gracious, and most charming expression to his heads, so he would have
surpassed his own self and the others in the solidity and perfect
excellence of his drawing.

He left behind him his cousin Girolamo Mazzuoli, who, with great credit
to himself, always imitated his manner, as is proved by the works by his
hand that are in Parma. At Viadana, also, whither he fled with Francesco
on account of the war, he painted, young as he was, a very beautiful
Annunciation on a little panel for S. Francesco, a seat of the Frati de'
Zoccoli; and he painted another for S. Maria ne' Borghi. For the
Conventual Friars of S. Francis at Parma he executed the panel-picture
of their high-altar, containing Joachim being driven from the Temple,
with many figures. And for S. Alessandro, a convent of nuns in that
city, he painted a panel with