Citation link:
https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/vasari1851bd4/0094
86
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS.
and partly for the pleasure of once again visiting his native
place, proceeded to Florence, where he arrived a short time
before the court had reached that city. He then received a
commission to prepare a figure seven braccia high for the
Arch erected at Santa Trinita, another of equal size being
confided at the same time to Toto del Nunziata, who had
been his rival in childhood, and who now executed that
figure in competition with him.
But to Pietro every hour seemed a thousand years till he
could get back to Rome, seeing that the degrees and modes
of proceeding among the Florentine artists appeared to him
something very different from what he had been accustomed
to in Rome. He departed from Florence therefore, and
returned to Rome accordingly, where he resumed his usual
course of life and habits of occupation. In Sant’ Eustachio
della Dogana, Perino then painted a figure of San Pietro in
fresco ;* this is a work which exhibits extraordinary relief,
the draperies are particularly simple in their folds, the
drawing is admirable, and the execution singularly judicious.
Now at that time it chanced that the Archbishop of
Cyprus, a man who greatly delighted in art, but more
especially in painting, was in Rome, and he, having a house
near the Chiavica, around which he had laid out a small
garden adorned with a few statues and other antiquities, all
being certainly arranged with infinite beauty and decorum ;
having these statues, I say, the Archbishop desired to add
to them some appropriate ornament in painting, wherefore he
caused Perino, who was his very intimate friend, to be sum-
moned, and having consulted together, they determined that
there should be various stories depicted around the walls of
the garden, exhibiting Bacchantes, Satyrs, Furies, and wild
animals, all having some reference or allusion to a certain
antique statue of Bacchus, seated, with a tiger beside him,
which the Archbishop had there ; and thus they adorned
the place accordingly with divers poesies. They constructed
a Loggia likewise, which they decorated with small figures,
grottesche, and numerous pictures, landscapes among others,
and these are painted with so much grace, and in so careful a
* Destroyed, in the reparation of the church, as were the works of
Baldassarc Peruzzi and Pelegrino Tibaldi.—Bottari,
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS.
and partly for the pleasure of once again visiting his native
place, proceeded to Florence, where he arrived a short time
before the court had reached that city. He then received a
commission to prepare a figure seven braccia high for the
Arch erected at Santa Trinita, another of equal size being
confided at the same time to Toto del Nunziata, who had
been his rival in childhood, and who now executed that
figure in competition with him.
But to Pietro every hour seemed a thousand years till he
could get back to Rome, seeing that the degrees and modes
of proceeding among the Florentine artists appeared to him
something very different from what he had been accustomed
to in Rome. He departed from Florence therefore, and
returned to Rome accordingly, where he resumed his usual
course of life and habits of occupation. In Sant’ Eustachio
della Dogana, Perino then painted a figure of San Pietro in
fresco ;* this is a work which exhibits extraordinary relief,
the draperies are particularly simple in their folds, the
drawing is admirable, and the execution singularly judicious.
Now at that time it chanced that the Archbishop of
Cyprus, a man who greatly delighted in art, but more
especially in painting, was in Rome, and he, having a house
near the Chiavica, around which he had laid out a small
garden adorned with a few statues and other antiquities, all
being certainly arranged with infinite beauty and decorum ;
having these statues, I say, the Archbishop desired to add
to them some appropriate ornament in painting, wherefore he
caused Perino, who was his very intimate friend, to be sum-
moned, and having consulted together, they determined that
there should be various stories depicted around the walls of
the garden, exhibiting Bacchantes, Satyrs, Furies, and wild
animals, all having some reference or allusion to a certain
antique statue of Bacchus, seated, with a tiger beside him,
which the Archbishop had there ; and thus they adorned
the place accordingly with divers poesies. They constructed
a Loggia likewise, which they decorated with small figures,
grottesche, and numerous pictures, landscapes among others,
and these are painted with so much grace, and in so careful a
* Destroyed, in the reparation of the church, as were the works of
Baldassarc Peruzzi and Pelegrino Tibaldi.—Bottari,