Perino Del Vaga, Otherwise Pierino Buonaccorsi

, one of the most distinguished scholars and assistants of Raphael in the Vatican, was born in a Tuscan village in 1500. Vasari seems to consider him as the first designer of the Florentine school after Michael Angelo, and as the best of Raphael’s pupils: it is certain, that in a general grasp of the art, none approached Julio Romano so near, equally fit to render on a large scale the historic designs of his master, to work in stucco and grotesque ornaments with Giovanni da Udine, or with Polidoro to paint chiaroscuros. The Immolation of Isaac in the Stanze, the taking of Jericho, Joseph sold by his Brethren, Jacob with the Vision, the Drowning of Pharaoh, with others among the frescos of the Loggia, are his. That he had much of the Florentine style may be seen in the works of his own invention, such as the Birth of Eve in the church of St. Marcello, at Rome, a; high-wrought performance, with some Infants that have an air of life. At a monastery in Tivoli there is a St. John in the same style, with an admirable landscape, and many more in Lucca and Pisa.

But the real theatre of Perino’s art is Genoa, where he arrived in 1528, to preside over the embellishments and decorations of the magnificent palace of prince Doria without the gate of St. Tommaso. Every thing in this mansion, whether executed by Pierino himself, or from his cartoons, breathes the spirit of Raphael’s school, in proportion to the felicity or inferiority of execution; a nearer approach neither his powers nor principles permitted: eager to dispatch, and greedy to acquire, he debased much of his plan by the indelicate or interested choice of his associates. It is, however, to the style he introduced, and the principles he established, that Genoa owes the foundation of its school. Perino died in 1547, aged forty-seven. ²