Udine, Giovanna Da

, an eminent artist, called Gio. Da Nanni, or Ricamatori, as Vasari promiscuously calls him, was born in 1494, at Udine in the Friul, and passed from the school of Giorgiorie to that of Raphael Sanzio, |

under whose direction he executed the greater part of the stuccoes and grotesque ornaments in the Logge and various apartments of the Vatican. In this branch of the art he is not only considered as the first, but as an inventor: for though under Alexander VI. Morto da Feltro had begun to paint in grotesque, he was not acquainted with stucco, which was first discovered in the baths of Titus, and successfully imitated by this artist. His bowers, plants, and foliage, his aviaries, mews, birds and fowls of every kind, impose on the eye by a truth of imitation less the result of labour than of sentiment: his touch is all character, and never deviates into the anxious detail of fac-similists. After the saccage of Rome he visited other parts of Italy, and left various specimens of his art at Florence, Genoa, and Udiue. He died in 1564.¹