Federigo Zuccaro was invited to Madrid by Philip II. to execute some
frescos in the lower cloister of the Escurial, which, failing to give
satisfaction to his royal patron, were subsequently effaced, and their
place supplied by Pellegrino Tibaldi; the king nevertheless munificently
rewarded him. One day, as he was displaying a picture of the Nativity,
which he had painted for the great altar of the Escurial, for the
inspection of the monarch, he said, "Sire, you now behold all that art
can execute; beyond this which I have done, the powers of painting
cannot go." The king was silent for some time; his countenance betrayed
neither approbation nor contempt; at last, preserving the same
indifference, he quietly asked the painter what _those things_ were in
the basket of one of the shepherds in the act of running? He replied
they were eggs. "It is well then, that he did not break them," said the
king, as he turned on his way--a just rebuke for such fulsome
self-adulation.