Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/466

458 renowned Sienese merchant, visited his native city, and Giovan-Antonio was made known to him, as well by the follies he committed, as because he had the name of a good painter; wherefore Agostino conducted him to Rome, where Pope Julius II. was at that time causing the papal apartments in the Vatican, which had formerly been erected by Nicholas V., to be decorated with paintings, and Chigi so contrived that Giovan-Antonio was employed with other artists to work in those apartments.

Now Pietro Perugino was then painting the ceiling of one cf the rooms, that namely which is close beside the Torre Borgia, but he, being an old man, worked slowly, and, not being able to commence such other portions of the work as he had at first been commanded to execute, a room beside that which Pietro was painting was then given to Giovan-Antonio. He, therefore, putting hand to the same, painted the decorations of cornices, friezes, and foliage, which border the ceiling, and then proceeded to paint certain large circular compartments, wherein he executed stories in fresco, which are of very considerable merit. But as this animal, occupied as he was with his four-footed creatures and his follies, did not steadily continue and put forward the work, Raffaello da Urbino, who had been invited to Rome by the architect Bramante, and whose superiority to the other artists had become manifest to the Pontiff,—Raffaello, I say, received charge of the whole, and his Holiness commanded that neither Perugino nor Giovan-Antonio should work any more in those apartments, nay, furthermore, he gave orders that all which they had done should be destroyed.

But Raffaello, who was goodness and modesty itself permitted all the paintings that Pietro Perugino, who had formerly been his master, had accomplished, to retain their places, nor did he efface the work of the Mattaccio except so far as the figures of the medallions and the stories were concerned; all the decorations and ornaments which served as framework, he suffered to remain, and they still surround the figures executed by Raphael, that of Justice and Knowledge namely, with those of Poetry and Theology.

Then Agostino, who was a man of the utmost courtesy and kindness, without permitting himself to be deterred by the affront which had been put upon Giovan-Antonio, gave