Footnote 12: Foreshortening figures; here meant on a ceiling.
Bartolommeo Passerotti has been commended by Borghini and Lomazzo; and he is casually named also by Vasari among the assistants of Taddeo Zuccaro; indeed, it may rather be said, this is the artist with whom Vasari ceases to write, and Malvasia to inveigh.[13] He possessed excellent skill in designing with his pen; a gift which drew to his school Agostino Caracci, and which assisted the latter as a guide in the art of engraving. He likewise wrote a book, from which he taught the symmetry and anatomy of the human body, essential to the artist; and was the first who, to make a grander display, began to vary scriptural histories at Bologna by drawing the naked torsi. The finest of these specimens are, the Beheading of St. Paul, at Rome, in the Tre Fontane; and at S. Giacomo, of Bologna, a picture of the Virgin among various saints; a work meant to compete with the Caracci, and embellished by their praise. One of his pictures too of "Tizio" was much celebrated, which, being exhibited to the public, was supposed by the professors of Bologna to have been the work of Michelangiolo. This exquisite degree of diligence and refinement he rarely used; most generally he was bold and free, somewhat resembling Cesare, only more correct. In his portraits, however, he is by no means a common painter. After Titian, Guido included him among the very first, not preferring before him the Caracci themselves, whose name, indeed, in several galleries, is attached to the portraits of Passerotti. The most commendable of all however, are those he executed for the noble family Legnani--entire figures extremely varied in costume, in action, and attitudes; it being his usual custom to compose portraits, such as Ridolfi described of Paris, which should appear ideal pictures. By means of such a talent, which made him agreeable to the great, by his polite and refined manners and malicious strictures, he became a match for the Caracci; for whom he also prepared rivals in a number of his sons, whom he carefully instructed in the art. Among these, Tiburzio possessed real merit, of which his fine picture of the Martyrdom of St. Catherine, conducted in the taste of his father, displays sufficient proof. Passerotto and Ventura, however, were below mediocrity. Aurelio was a good miniaturist, and in the same branch Gaspero, a son of Tiburzio, also met with success. In the works of Bartolommeo we often meet with a sparrow, the symbol of his own name; a custom derived from the ancients, and followed by many of our own artists. It is a well-known fact relating to two sculptors, Batraco and Sauro, that for their proper names they substituted, the former a frog, and the latter a lizard.