the other, the scene
when the Blood of Christ was discovered in the time of the Countess
Matilda, which was a most beautiful work.

Giulio then painted with his own hand for Duke Federigo a picture of Our
Lady washing the little Jesus Christ, who is standing in a basin, while
a little S. John is pouring out the water from a vase. Both of these
figures, which are of the size of life, are very beautiful; and in the
distance are small figures, from the waist upwards, of some ladies who
are coming to visit the Madonna. This picture was afterwards presented
by the Duke to Signora Isabella Buschetta, of which lady Giulio
subsequently made a most beautiful portrait in a little picture of the
Nativity of Christ, one braccio in height, which is now in the
possession of Signor Vespasiano Gonzaga, together with another picture
presented to him by Duke Federigo, and likewise by the hand of Giulio,
in which are a young man and a young woman embracing each other on a
bed, in the act of caressing one another, while an old woman peeps at
them secretly from behind a door--figures which are little less than
life-size, and very graceful. In the house of the same person is another
very excellent picture of a most beautiful S. Jerome, also by the hand
of Giulio. And in the possession of Count Niccola Maffei is a picture of
Alexander the Great, of the size of life, with a Victory in his hand,
copied from an ancient medal, which is a work of great beauty.

After these works, Giulio painted in fresco over a chimney-piece, for M.
Girolamo, the organist of the Duomo at Mantua, who was very much his
friend, a Vulcan who is working his bellows with one hand and holding
with the other, with a pair of tongs, the iron head of an arrow that he
is forging, while Venus is tempering in a vase some already made and
placing them in Cupid's quiver. This is one of the most beautiful works
that Giulio ever executed; and there is little else in fresco by his
hand to be seen. For S. Domenico, at the commission of M. Lodovico da
Fermo, he painted an altar-piece of the Dead Christ, whom Joseph and
Nicodemus are preparing to lay in the sepulchre, and near them are His
Mother, the other Maries, and S. John the Evangelist. And a little
picture, in which he also painted a Dead Christ, is in the house of the
Florentine Tommaso da Empoli at Venice.

At the same time when he was executing these and other pictures, it
happened that Signor Giovanni de' Medici, having b