trait,
because it is not possible to say as much of its perfection as would
exhaust its merits. If Fate had decreed that Palma should die after this
work, he would have carried off with him the glory of having surpassed
all those whom we celebrate as our rarest and most divine intellects;
but the duration of his life, keeping him at work, brought it about
that, not maintaining the high beginning that he had made, he came to
deteriorate as much as most men had thought him destined to improve.
Finally, content that one or two supreme works should have cleared him
of some of the censure that the others had brought upon him, he died in
Venice at the age of forty-eight.

A friend and companion of Palma was Lorenzo Lotto, a painter of Venice,
who, after imitating for some time the manner of the Bellini, attached
himself to that of Giorgione, as is shown by many pictures and portraits
which are in the houses of gentlemen in Venice. In the house of Andrea
Odoni there is a portrait of him, which is very beautiful, by the hand
of Lorenzo. And in the house of Tommaso da Empoli, a Florentine, there
is a picture of the Nativity of Christ, painted as an effect of night,
which is one of great beauty, particularly because the splendour of
Christ is seen to illuminate the picture in a marvellous manner; and
there is the Madonna kneeling, with a portrait of Messer Marco Loredano
in a full-length figure that is adoring Christ. For the Carmelite Friars
the same master painted an altar-piece showing S. Nicholas in his
episcopal robes, poised in the air, with three Angels; below him are S.
Lucia and S. John, on high some clouds, and beneath these a most
beautiful landscape, with many little figures and animals in various
places. On one side is S. George on horseback, slaying the Dragon, and
at a little distance the Maiden, with a city not far away, and an arm of
the sea. For the Chapel of S. Antonino, Archbishop of Florence, in SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, Lorenzo executed an altar-piece containing the
first-named Saint seated with two priests in attendance, and many people
below.

[Illustration: THE GLORIFICATION OF S. NICHOLAS

(_After the painting by =Lorenzo Lotto=. Venice: S. Maria del Carmine_)

_Anderson_]

While this painter was still young, imitating partly the manner of the
Bellini and partly that of Giorgione, he painted an altar-piece, divided
into six pictures, for the high-altar of S. Domenico at Recanati. In the
central picture