Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/325

Rh completed, Vasari and Cristofano still remained several months in Venice, painting for the magnificent Messer Giovanni Cornaro, the ceiling, or rather the entire wainscot work of an apartment, for which they executed nine large pictures in oil. Vasari was indeed much entreated by the Veronese architect, Michele San Michele, to fix himself in Venice, and might perhaps have agreed to remain there for some years, but Cristofano constantly dissuaded him from doing so, declaring that Venice was no place to settle in, good design being but little regarded there, and the painters of that city giving but slight attention to that matter, nay, being as he affirmed, rather a hindrance to the progress of art than promoters of the same, seeing that they felt but little zeal for the labours of their vocation; better would it be therefore, lie maintained, to return to Rome, which is the true school of the noble arts, and where ability is much more highly valued than in Venice.

These dissuasions of Cristofano, therefore, coining in aid of the indifference, not to say disinclination, of Vasari to remain in Venice, they departed from that city together, but as Cristofano, being considered a rebel to the state of Florence, could not accompany Vasari thither, he returned to San Justino. Here he constantly found something wherewith to occupy himself for the above-mentioned Abbot Bufolini; but he had not remained long at San Justino before he set off for Perugia, and this he did at the period when Pope Paul III. made his first visit to that city, after the war with the Perugini. Preparations being made for the reception of his Holiness, Cristofano took part in the execution thereof, and did himself much credit in some of them, more especially in those made at the gate called that of the Frate Pinieri, where he depicted a colossal figure of Jupiter in anger, with another of the same deity, but propitiated. These subjects were chosen by command of Monsignore Della Barba, who was then governor of the city. The figures were both very beautiful, and on the other side Cristofano delineated a figure of Atlas bearing the globe of the world on his shoulders, and having a female form at each side, one holding a sword, the other a balance in her hand.

These works, with many others which Cristofano executed for the same festival, caused that artist to be employed for