Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/540

528 Naples, it would be better for me to return to Rome; and having done so, the first thing I did after my arrival was to paint four immense pictures, in oil and on cloth, for the doors of the Organ of the Epispocal Church in Naples, for the Signor Rannuccio Farnese, who was then Archbishop of that city. On the outer side of these doors were placed five Saints, Patrons of Naples; and on the inside was the Birth of Christ with the Shepherds, and King David singing from his Psalter the words, Dominus diodt ad me. I also finished the above-named twenty-four pictures, with some for Messer Tommaso Cambi, which were all sent to Naples.

These works completed, I painted five pictures for Raffaello Acciaiuoli, by whom they were taken into Spain; these represented the Passion of Christ. The same year. Cardinal Farnese, desiring to have the Hall of the Chancery, in the Palace of San Giorgio, adorned with Paintings, Monsignore Giovio, anxious to see the work in my hands, advised me to prepare various designs and inventions, which were nevertheless not put into execution. Ultimately, however, the Cardinal determined on having the Hall painted in fresco, and with all the expedition possible, desiring to have it ready for his use at a certain fixed time. The Hall is rather more than a hundred palms long, fifty wide, and about fifty high. At each end it was determined to have one large picture, and on one of the side walls two, but on the other, which was broken by windows, there could not be stories, and there was consequently only a repetition of the ornaments forming the divisions of the opposite side. And here, to avoid reproducing the basement or socle, which had always been painted beneath pictures of this kind, and with the view to attain variety of effect, I caused a range of steps, rising at least nine palms above the floor, to be constructed in various forms, each picture having its separate flight. On these steps I placed figures in harmony with the subject represented above them, these ascending until they came to the platform or level, whence the pictures commenced.

It would, however, be a long and, perchance, fatiguing story, were I to describe all the particulars of these pictures; I will therefore only touch on the principal features. The whole