Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/539

Rh procession. But the Monks, aided by some fifteen or sixteen young men, who were helping me in my stucco-works, having made resistance, certain of the Sbirri were wounded, this compelled my assistants to take refuge in the night-time, some here, others there, and I was left almost alone. Thus I was not only prevented from making the Loggie, but was impeded also in the execution of twenty-four stories from the Old Testament, and from the Life of San Giovanni Battista, which, as I did not choose to leave them in Naples, I took with me to finish them in Borne, whence I afterwards sent them to their destined place.

I then spent several months on the stalls and presses of walnut-wood, made after my own designs and architecture, in the Sacristy of San Giovanni Carbonaro, a monastery of the Eremite Monks, who are Observantines of Saint Augustine, and for whom a short time previously I had painted a picture of Christ crucified, in a chapel outside of their church. This, to which I had added a rich frame of stucco-work, was executed by me at the desire of Seripando, the General of their Order, who was afterwards made a Cardinal. In the centre of the staircase at the same Monastery, I likewise depicted San Giovanni in fresco; he is looking at Our Lady, who, standing on the Moon, is clothed with the Sun and crowned with twelve stars.

At Naples, I furthermore painted the Hall of a house belonging to the Florentine merchant, Messer Tommaso Cambi, who waCmy friend, adorning the four walls of the same with pictures of the Seasons. On a terrace, moreover, where I constructed a fountain for Messer Tommaso, I likewise executed paintings of Sleep and Dreams. For the Duke of Gravina I painted an Adoration of the Magi, which he took with him into his states; and for Orsanca, the Viceroy’s secretary, I delineated five figures around a crucifix, with many other pictures.

But although well received by the Neapolitan nobles, very liberally remunerated, and finding commissions daily multiplying on my hands, I nevertheless decided that, as my young men had departed, and I had executed a very fair sufiiciency of works, during the year that I had passed in