Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/322

314 not discovered his condition, he must have died where he lay. There was, indeed, the utmost difficulty in restoring him, the bed having become a lake of blood, and Cristofano himself being almost at the last gasp. Vasari then took him into his own especial care, and caused him to be attended with as much solicitude as if he had been his brother, but all that could be done was only just sufficient; and it was not until after the whole work had been some time completed, that Cristofano was entirely restored.

Having afterwards returned to San Justino, Cristofano there finished some of the apartments belonging to the beforementioned abbot, and which had been left incomplete; he subsequently executed a picture, which his intimate friend Battista had been commissioned to paint, at Città di Castello, entirely with his own hand; and further undertook the decoration of the lunette above the lateral door of San Fiorido, depicting three figures in fresco therein.

Giorgio Vasari being then summoned by the intervention of Messer Pietro Aretino, to Venice, there to arrange the preparations for a most sumptuous festival, to be given by the nobles and gentlemen of a company called Della Calza, with the scenic decorations for a drama composed for those nobles by Messer Pietro himself; Vasari being thus employed, I say, he, not being able to conduct so extensive a work without aid, sent for Cristofano and the above-named Battista Cugni; and these artists did at length arrive in Venice; but first they had been carried by the chances of the sea into Sclavonia: when they finally reached Venice, therefore, they found that Vasari had not only arrived in that city before them, but had already designed everything, insomuch that there remained nothing for them to do but at once to set hand to the painting.

Now the above-mentioned nobles and gentlemen of the Calza had hired a large unfinished house, situate at the end of the Canareio, and this building, having only its principal walls erected and the roof put on, Giorgio had at his disposal a space which formed an apartment seventy braccia long, by sixteen braccia wide; herein he caused to be erected two ranges of seats formed of wood and raised four braccia from the ground, these being intended for the accommodation ot the gentlewomen, who were to be seated thereon. The walls