Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/116

108 pleted the work to the utmost perfection. Perino furthermore gave designs for a vast number of banners to be used in the prince’s galleys, and for standards of the largest size that could be made, all exceedingly beautiful.

For these things and for his many good qualities, our artist was so much beloved by Prince Poria, that his services would without doubt have been most liberally remunerated by that sovereign, had Perino been content to remain in Genoa; but while thus prosperously occupied in that city, the fancy took him of fetching his wife from Rome, and as it chanced that he was much pleased with the aspect of Pisa, he determined to buy a house there, and did so, almost with the purpose of making his abode in that city when he should find age approaching.

Now at that time the Warden of the Cathedral was Messer Antonio di Urbano, who had the greatest desire to promote the embellishment of that temple, and had indeed caused a commencement to be made, by giving a commission to the practised and excellent carver in marbles, Stagio di Pietrasanta, who had received commands to prepare rich decorations in marble for the chapels of the church, and with these which Stagio finished in a very beautiful manner, he had replaced the old, rude, ill-proportioned figures which had formerly occupied the place. Having thus made a beginning, the Warden then thought of filling the spaces between those decorations in marble, with paintings executed in oil for the interior, and in fresco for the outer part, which he desired to have adorned with a mixture of paintings and ornaments in stucco. All this Antonio determined to have done by the best and most eminent masters that he could find, without suffering the extent of cost that might arise to be any impediment; and in this spirit he had already commenced the Sacristy, which he had caused to be constructed in the great apsis behind the high altar, the decorations in marble being completely finished, and many pictures having been painted for the same by the Florentine painter Giovan Antonio Sogliani: the renlhinder, with the chapels and paintings still