Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/492

484 ingly, but observed to Bastiano that he must acquire better manners, and treat him in a different fashion, more especially when they were in the presence of great personages.

Now it happened that Roberto Strozzi making a banquet, at the time of Carnival, in one of those years which Bastiano spent at Rome, for certain Signori who were his friends, and having to perform a drama in his house, employed Aristotile to make due preparation for the same in the Great Hall, which he did in a manner so pleasing, so graceful, and so beautiful (the space at his command not being very great), that every one was astonished at the sight thereof. Among those who thus admired this work was the Cardinal Farnese, but that prelate, not content with admiring, caused Aristotile to arrange a theatre for himself in his palace of San Giorgio, wherein is the Chancery, and in one of those halls which look on the garden, and are in the story beneath the principal floor of the Palace; commanding him, moreover, so to construct the same, that it might remain permanent, and thus be ready for his use at any time when he might require or wish to avail himself thereof. This work also Aristotile conducted with all the care and study that he could possibly bestow thereon, which caused the Cardinal to be infinitely pleased with it, and the result was equally satisfactory to every one connected with art.

Now the Cardinal had committed the care of paying Aristotile to Messer Curzio Frangipani, and the latter, desiring as a prudent man should, to do what was right, but not to overpay the artist, called on Perino del Vaga and Giorgio Vasari to estimate the work. This was just then particularly agreeable to Perino, for he detested Bastiano, and felt much displeased that he had received the commission for that work, which he’thought should of right have been given to himself, as being a servant of the Cardinal; he was besides full of anxiety and jealousy because the Cardinal had not only availed himself of Bastiano’s services, but was at that time employing Vasari also, to whom he had given a thousand crowns for having painted in fresco the Hall of the “Parco Maiori,” in the Chancery, a work completed by Giorgio in a hundred days. Moved by these causes, therefore, Perino determined to estimate the above-