Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/529

Rh cause my friend, Messer Andrea Alciati, caused the following words to be written beneath the picture:— Octonis mensibus opus ab Arretino Georgia Pictum, non tam praevio, quam amicorum obseguio, et honoris voto, anno 1539, ''Philippus Serralius pon. curavit''. At the same time I painted two small pictures, one of a Dead Christ, and the other of the Hesurrection, which were placed by the Abbot, Don Miniato Pitti, in the Church of Santa Maria di Barbiano, which is outside of San Gimignano in the Val d’Elsa. These works completed, I returned instantly to Florence, seeing that the Trevisan, Maestro Biagio, and other Bolognese masters, believing that I proposed to settle in Bologna, and might, in that case, take their works out of their hands, had begun to disquiet me from the first, and did not cease to do so; but they injured themselves thereby more than they did me, who could not but laugh at certain of their furies, and at the modes of their proceeding in my regard.

Having arrived in Florence, I copied the Portrait of Cardinal Ippolito, a large half-length figure, with some other pictures for Messer Ottaviano de’ Medici, and with these I occupied my time during the insupportable heats of that summer; but having finished the same I returned to the quiet and freshness of Camaldoli, there to paint that picture of the High Altar before alluded to. The subject of the work is Christ deposed from the Cross, and all the study and labour at my command did I bestow thereon. But as it appeared to me, that by time and efibrt I was making a certain progress, and the first sketch which I had prepared for it no longer satisfied me, I gave it a new ground and recommenced it, making it as we now see.

Detained in the place by the charms of that solitude, I lingered there for some time after the completion of the above, and then painted for Messer Ottaviano, a youthful San Giovanni, the figure nude, and represented amidst rocks and mountains, which I copied from the district around me. Nor had I well put an end to this picture before Messer Bindo Altoviti, arriving at Camaldoli, and by my good fortune being pleased with the works executed there, resolved