_Death of Death's Painter._--Most persons have heard of the story of an
Italian painter who embodied the idea of Death on the canvass so
truthfully, that the contemplation of it caused his own death. I always
thought it was fabulous, till I met with it in the translation of
Vasari's _Lives of the Painters_, vol. ii. p. 305., now being published
in Bohn's _Standard Library_. The name of Fivizzano is there given to
the painter, and the following epigram is said to have been inscribed
beneath the picture:--
"Me veram pictor divinus mente recepit.
Admota est operi deinde perita manus.
Dumque opere in facto defigit lumina pictor,
Intentus nimium, palluit et moritur.
Viva igitur sum mors, non mortua mortis imago
Si fungor, quo mors fungitur officio."