Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/438

430 architecture. Thereupon he departed from Milan, and repaired to Kome, where he arrived immediately before the commencement of the holy year 1500. By the interposition of the friends whom he had in that city, some of whom were his fellow countrymen, others Lombards, he received a commission to paint the armorial bearings of Pope Alexander YI. in fresco over the holy door of San Giovanni Laterano, which is opened on the occasion of the Jubilee; these he surrounded with angels and added other figures, as supporters of the escutcheon. Bramante had brought some money with him from Lombardy and had gained other sums in Rome by certain works which he had executed there; these funds he husbanded with care, expending them with extreme frugality, because he desired to live for a time on his means, and not to be distracted by other occupations from the labours which he proposed to undertake among the ancient buildings of Rome, all of which he was anxious to study, wishing to obtain accurate measurements of them, entirely at his leisure.

He commenced this labour accordingly; in solitude and deep thought he pursued it to its completion, and in no long time had examined and measured all the buildings of antiquity that were in the city of Rome and its neighbourhood, with all that were to be found in the Campagna; he had even