Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/515

Rh paint a picture for which Rosso made me the design, and which I afterwards executed with all the study, labour, and care that I could possibly command, being anxious to improve, as well as to acquire some little reputation and name. And now, had but my power equalled my desire, I should soon have became a tolerably good painter, so earnestly did I labour, and so anxiously did I study my art; but I found the difficulties of success much greater than I had believed them to be.

Not losing courage, nevertheless, I returned to Florence; but seeing that it must still be long before I could attain to such a position as would enable me to assist the three sisters and two brothers, all younger than myself, vdiom I had left to me by my father, I set myself to practise the art of the goldsmith. This did not last long, seeing that in the year 1529, the army having encamped before Florence, I went with my good friend, the goldsmith Manno, to Pisa, where, abandoning the practice of goldsmiths’ work, I painted a fresco on the arch over the door of the building wherein the Old Company of the Florentines are wont to assemble, with some pictures in oil, the commissions for which I obtained by means of Don Miniato Pitti, then Abbot of Agnano, outside Pisa, and of Luigi Guicciardini who was at that time in Pisa.

The war meanwhile became daily more violent, and I resolved to return to Arezzo; but not being able to do so by the direct and ordinary route, I crossed by the mountains of Modena to Bologna, where, finding that certain triumphal arches, decorated with paintings, were about to be erected for the Coronation of Charles V., I had an opportunity of employing myself, even though but a youth, to my honour as well as profit. Nay, being tolerably well skilled in design, I might have found the means of establishing myself, and occupying my time in that city; but the wish that I felt to rejoin my family and friends impelled me to seize an opportunity which presented itself for travelling in good company, and I returned to Arezzo. Here I found that my affairs, by the diligent care which my uncle Don Antonio had taken of them, were in a very satisfactory state; and thus tranquillized in mind, I devoted myself to design, and even ventured