Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/43

Rh pelled to admit his identity and confess the truth, he then sutFered his case to be known, and allowed that he had great need of Giorgio’s assistance with the Pontiff in the matter of his pension, which was withheld from him by a certain Fra Guglielmo, a sculptor of Genoa, who had succeeded to the leaden seal after the death of Fra Bastiano.

Giorgio mentioned the affair to His Holiness accordingly, when the order for Giovanni to receive his pension was renewed, and subsequently an attempt was made to exchange the same for a canonicate, to be Conferred on a son of Giovanni. Meanwhile the pension was again withheld by that Fra Guglielmo, and Giovanni repaired from Udine to Florence, just when Pope Pius was elected to the papal chair, hoping that he might there be favoured by His Excellency whose intervention with the Pontiff he expected to obtain by means of Vasari. Having reached Florence therefore, he was made known to the Duke by Vasari, and was permitted to accompany his most Illustrious Excellency to Siena; nay, from that last-mentioned city he went with that Signore to Pome also, whither repaired at the same time the Signora Duchess Leonora. In Rome Giovanni da Udine was so powerfully aided by the Duke, that he was comforted by the obtaining of all that he desired; nay, was furthermore commissioned by the Pope to give the ultimate completion to the last of the Loggie; that namely which is over the one formerly constructed by Pope Leo: he received very handsome appointments while thus employed, and when that work was finished he was commanded by the same Pontiff to retouch all the pictures of the last-mentioned Loggia.

But this was an error, and a very ill-considered thing, seeing that the retouching of those paintings a secco caused them to lose all those masterly touches effected by the pencil of Giovanni, when he had been in all the excellence of his best days, and deprived them of that freshness and delicacy