Note 174 — BOOK I. (continued 3)

Vasari, in his Life of Morto, says, that he came to Florence in order to improve his skill in figures, in which he was deficient, by studying the models of Vinci and of Michelangiolo. In despair, however, he returned to his grotesques. Now I shall elsewhere produce an unedited document shewing his ability in figure painting, which I should not have occasion to do if the beautiful portrait of Morto, in the Royal Gallery at Florence, was, as is conjectured, by his hand. But I am inclined to think that it is the likeness of an unknown person, who, as I have seen in other portraits, caused himself to be drawn with a finger pointing to a death's head, in order to remind him of his mortality, but in this picture the head has been capriciously interpreted as a symbol of the name of Morto, and the painting given as the portrait and work of Feltrese; of whom Vasari gives a very different one.