Vincenzo Civerchio, denominated by Vasari Verchio, to which Lomazzo, who asserts him to have been a Milanese, added the surname of Il Vecchio, is an artist whom we have recorded in the Venetian School, to which he is referred as a native of Crema, though he resided at Milan and educated several excellent pupils for that school, and with the exception of Vinci is the best entitled of any master to its gratitude. Vasari, when he praises his works in fresco, considers him in no way inferior to Foppa. In his figures he was extremely studied, and admirable in his method of grouping them in the distance, so as to throw the low grounds back, and bring down the higher parts with a gentle gradation. Of this he affords a model at S. Eustorgio in some histories of S. Peter Martyr, painted for a chapel of that name, which are highly commended by Lomazzo, though they have since been covered with plaister, there remaining only from the hand of Civerchio the summits of the cupola, which we trust will enjoy a longer date.[44] Ambrogio Bevilacqua is an artist known by a production at S. Stefano, representing S. Ambrogio with saints Gervasio and Protasio standing at his side. Other paintings procured for him the reputation of a fine drawer of perspective, though in the specimen here mentioned he has undoubtedly not adhered to its rules. The design, however, is such as approaches, with some slight traces of dryness, to a good style. Memorials of this artist are found as early as 1486; but of his brother Filippo, his assistant, and of Carlo, a native of Milan, mentioned by Lomazzo in the same work, I am able to find no account. There are two, however, who are referred by our already highly commended correspondent to this more remote epoch. These are Gio. de' Ponzoni, who left a picture of S. Cristoforo in a church near the city, called Samaritana, and a Francesco Crivelli, who is reported to have been the first who painted portraits in the city of Milan.
Footnote 44: The epochs relating to this artist appear difficult, and almost irreconcileable. From Lomazzo's account he was a painter as early as 1460, and according to Ronna, in his _Zibaldone Cremasco_, for the year 1795, p. 84, there are existing documents which prove that he was still living in 1535. If we give credit to these, Civerchio must have flourished to an extreme age, so as to be ranked in this point with Titian, with Calvi, and the other hoary-headed octogenarians of the art.