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Updated: May 13, 2025
Windows stained in colors that burn, let in a "dim, religious light" which accords very well with the dark old pillars and antique shrines. In two of the chapels there are some fine altar-pieces by Holbein and one of his scholars; and a very large crucifix of silver and ebony, which is kept with great care, is said to have been carried with the Crusaders to the Holy Land.
Becoming known by some paintings done for the friars of the Badia, Cardinal Salviati took him into his house, gave him a stipend of four crowns a month, and an apartment at the Borgo Vecchio, he painting any works the Cardinal wished. Francesco was not idle, a great number of frescoes, altar-pieces, and portraits, &c., &c., testifying to his industry.
At which the Guardian had to appear a little appeased, although he went off muttering under his breath. Giovan Francesco was very sharp in his answers; and it is also related of him that once, being told by a priest that his figures were too seductive for altar-pieces, he replied: "A lusty fellow you must be, if painted figures so move you.
The interior is dark and solemn, with much less gilding and meretricious ornament than is usual in Roman churches. It contains, in the side chapels, many objects of interest; frescoes and altar-pieces by Annibale Caracci, Pinturicchio, and Peruzzi; and splendid sepulchral monuments.
The presence of geometrical symmetry is more easily explained as the product, in large part, of technical conditions: of the fact that these pictures were painted as altar-pieces to fill a space definitely symmetrical in character often, indeed, with architectural elements intruding into it.
But where they exist as a whole, how solemn, significant, and instructive the arrangement! It may be read as we read a poem. Compare these with the groups round the enthroned Virgin in the later altar-pieces, where the saints elbow each other in attitudes, where mortal men sit with unseemly familiarity close to personages recognized as divine.
If a king was to be ransomed, it was they who furnished the money; if costly gifts were to be given to the Pope, it was they who made them. The value of the vessels of gold and silver, the robes and copes of silk and velvet, the chalices, the altar-pieces, and the shrines enriched with jewels, was inestimable. The feasts which the abbots gave were almost regal.
He was always writing orders to Amadeo to buy marbles and hurry on the work, always urging the prior to hasten the completion of the church, or inquiring in Florence and Rome for new masters to paint altar-pieces for the Certosa.
Veronese painted also the ceiling, the organ, and other altar-pieces, and a bust of him is here to show what manner of man he was. Close to the door, on the left as you leave, is a little Titian which might be very fine after cleaning. There are two ways of returning from S. Sebastiano to, say, the iron bridge of the Accademia. One is direct, the other indirect. Let us take the indirect one first.
His studies were chiefly Dedham, East Bergholt, the Valley of the Stour, and the neighbouring village of Stratford. At Stoke Nayland he painted an altar-piece for the church. There is also another altar-piece in a neighbouring church, but his altar-pieces are not known or treasured like his other works. Cooper tells a good story of Constable.
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