Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/119

Rh of that temple, already so rich in its antiquities, and to render the master himself immortal.

The many years of Perino’s abode in Genoa had rendered that city wearisome to him, although he obtained both profit and pleasure there; bethinking himself of Pome therefore, as she was under the felicitous reign of Pope Leo, and remembering also the many offers he had received during the lifetime of the Cardinal Ippoliti de’ Medici, to enter the service of that prelate, he would doubtless have disposed himself at once to revisit Rome, but the Cardinal Ippolito was then dead, for which cause he did not feel in so much haste to do so; things being at this point, and many of his friends desiring and urging his return, which he desired more than any of them, several letters were exchanged on the subject, and so it chanced that one morning, the whim coming into his head, he set off from Pisa without saying a word to any one, and repaired to Rome.

He very soon caused himself to be made known to the most reverend Cardinal Farnese, and was afterwards presented to Pope Paolo, but many months elapsed and he was still without any occupation, partly because he had been put off from day to day, and partly because he was attacked by some disease in one of his arms, and this, to say nothing of the suffering, cost him several hundred crowns, before he could get himself cured of it. Having no one to administer to his wants in this conjuncture, and mortified by the slightness of the attention which he experienced from the Court, Perino was several times on the point of departing, but Molza and others of his friends, encouraged him to wait in patience, observing that Rome was no more what she had been, but seemed determined that now a man should become wearied and disheartened before she would consent to call him forth and make him her own, more particularly if he pursue the path of the fine arts.

About this time Messer Pietro de’ Massimi bought a chapel in the church of the Santa Trinita, the ceiling and lunettes being already adorned with decorations in stucco, and the altar-piece having also been painted in oil by Giulio Romano and his brother-in-law Giovanni Francesco; wherefore Messer Pietro, desiring to see the chapel finished, commenced