there is a marble portal composed in the Doric Order, and built after
designs and models by the hand of Perino, with all its appurtenances of
pedestals, socles, shafts, capitals, architrave, frieze, cornice and
pediment, and with some most beautiful seated figures of women, who are
supporting an escutcheon. The masonry and carving of this work were
executed by Maestro Giovanni da Fiesole, and the figures were finished
to perfection by Silvio, the sculptor of Fiesole, a bold and resolute
master. Entering within the portal, one finds over the vestibule a vault
covered with stucco-work, varied scenes, and grotesques, and little
arches in each of which are scenes of war and various kinds of battles,
some fighting on foot and others on horseback, and all wrought with
truly extraordinary diligence and art. On the left one finds the
staircase, which has decorations of little grotesques after the antique
that could not be richer or more beautiful, with various scenes and
little figures, masks, children, animals, and other things of fancy,
executed with that invention and judgment that always marked his work,
insomuch that of their kind they may well be called divine. Having
ascended the staircase, one comes into a most beautiful loggia, which
has at each end a very handsome door of stone; and over each of these
doors, in the pediment, are painted two figures, one male and the other
female, represented in directly opposite attitudes, one showing the
front view and the other the back. The vaulting has five arches, and is
wrought superbly in stucco, and it is also divided by pictures in
certain ovals, containing scenes executed with the most perfect beauty
that could be achieved; and the walls are painted down to the floor with
many seated figures of captains in armour, some drawn from life and some
from imagination, and representing all the ancient and modern captains
of the house of Doria, and above them are large letters of gold, which
run thus--"Magni viri, maximi duces, optima fecere pro patria." In the
first hall, which opens into the loggia and is entered by one of the two
doors, that on the left hand, there are most beautiful ornaments of
stucco on the corners of the vaulting, and in the centre there is a
large scene of the Shipwreck of Æneas in the sea, in which are nude
figures, living and dead, in attitudes of infinite variety, besides a
good number of ships and galleys, some sound and some shattered by the
fury of the tempest; not without beautiful considerations in the figures
of the living, who are striving to save themselves, and expressions of
terror that are produced in their features by the struggle with the
waves, the danger of death, and all the emotions aroused by the perils
of the sea. This was the first scene and the first work that Perino
began for the Prince. It is said that when he arrived in Genoa, Girolamo
da Treviso had already appeared there in advance of him in order to
execute certain pictures, and was painting a wall that faced towards the
garden. And after Perino had begun to draw the cartoon for the scene of
the Shipwreck that has been described above, while he was taking his
time about it, amusing himself and seeing Genoa, and labouring only at
intervals at the cartoon, although a great part was finished in various
ways and those nudes were drawn, some in chiaroscuro, some in charcoal,
and others in black chalk, some being drawn in imitation of
gradine-work, others shaded, and others again only outlined; while, I
say, Perino was going on in this way, without beginning to paint,
Girolamo da Treviso murmured against him, saying, "Cartoons, and nothing
but cartoons! I have my art at the tip of my brush." Decrying him very
often in this or some other similar manner, it came to the ears of
Perino, who, taking offence, straightway caused his cartoon to be fixed
to the vaulting where the scene was to be painted, and the boards of his
staging to be removed in many places, to the end that the work might be
seen from below; and then he threw open the hall. Which hearing, all
Genoa ran to see it, and, amazed by Perino's grand design, they praised
him to the skies. Thither, among others, went Girolamo da Treviso, who
saw what he had never thought to see from the hand of Perino; whereupon,
dumbfoundered by the beauty of the work, he departed from Genoa without
asking leave of Prince Doria, and returned to Bologna, where he lived.
Perino was thus left alone in the service of the Prince, and finished
that hall, painting it in oils on the surface of the walls; and it was
held to be, as indeed it is, a thing unrivalled in its beauty, with its
lovely work in stucco in the centre of the vaulting and all around, even
below the lunettes, as I have described. In the other hall, into which
one enters by the right-hand door in the loggia, he executed on the
vaulting works in stucco almost similar in design to those of the other,
and painted pictures in fresco of Jove slaying the Giants with his
thunderbolts, in which are many very beautiful nudes, larger than life.
In the Heaven, likewise, are all the Gods, who are making gestures of
great vivacity and truly appropriate to their natures, amid the terrible
uproar of the thunder; besides which, the stucco-work is executed with
supreme diligence, and the fresco-colouring could not be more beautiful,
seeing that Perino was very able--indeed, a perfect master--in that
field. Near this he adorned four chambers, the ceilings of which are all
wrought in stucco, and distributed among them, in fresco, are the most
beautiful fables from Ovid, which have all the appearance of reality,
nor could any one imagine the beauty, the abundance, the variety, and
the great numbers of the little figures, animals, foliage, and
grotesques that are in them, all executed with lively invention. Beside
the other hall, likewise, he adorned four more chambers, but only
directing the work, which was carried out by his assistants, although he
gave them the designs both of the stucco-decorations and of the scenes,
figures, and grotesques, upon which a vast number of them worked, some
little and some much; such as Luzio Romano, who did much work in stucco
there and many grotesques, and a number of Lombards. Let it suffice to
say that there is no room there that has not something by his hand and
is not full of ornaments, even to the space below the vaulting, with
various compositions full of children, bizarre masks, and animals, which
all defies description; not to mention that the little studies, the
antechambers, the closets, and all other parts of the palace, are
painted and made beautiful. From the palace one passes into the garden
and into a low building, which has the most ornate decorations in all
the rooms, even below the ceilings, and so also the halls, chambers,
and anterooms, all adorned by the same hand. In this work Pordenone
also took a part, as I said in his Life, and likewise Domenico Beccafumi
of Siena, a very rare painter, who showed that he was not inferior to
any of the others, although the works by his hand that are in Siena are
the most excellent among the vast number that he painted.
But to return to the works that Perino executed after those that he did
in the Palace of the Prince; he executed a frieze in a room in the house
of Giannetin Doria, containing most beautiful women, and he did many
works for various gentlemen throughout the city, both in fresco and in
oil-colours. He painted a most beautiful altar-piece, very finely
designed, for S. Francesco, and another for a church called S. Maria "de
Consolatione," at the commission of a gentleman of the house of
Baciadonne: in which picture he painted the Nativity of Christ, a work
that is much extolled, but it was placed in a position so dark, that, by
reason of the light not being good enough, one is not able to recognize
its perfection, and all the more because Perino strove to paint it in a
dark manner, so that it has need of a strong light. He also made
drawings of the greater part of the Æneid, with the stories of Dido,
from which tapestries were woven; and he likewise drew beautiful
ornaments for the poops of galleys, which were carved and finished to
perfection by Carota and Tasso, wood-carvers of Florence, who proved
excellently well how able they were in that art. And in addition to all
these things he also executed a vast number of works on cloth for the
galleys of the Prince, and the largest standards that could be made for
their adornment and embellishment. Wherefore he was so beloved by that
Prince for his fine qualities, that, if he had continued to serve him,
the Prince would have richly rewarded his abilities.
But while he was working in Genoa, the fancy came to him to fetch his
wife from Rome, and so he bought a house in Pisa, being pleased with
that city and half thinking of choosing it as his place of habitation
when old age should come upon him. Now at that time the Warden of the
Duomo at Pisa was M. Antonio di Urbano, who had a very great desire to
embellish that temple, and had already caused a beginning to be made
with some very beautiful ornaments of marble for the chapels of the
church, which had been executed by the hand of Stagio da Pietrasanta, a
very able and well practised carver of marble: removing some old,
clumsy, and badly proportioned chapels that were there. Having thus made
a beginning, the Warden proposed to fill up those ornaments in the
interior with altar-pieces in oils, and on the outer side with a series
of scenes in fresco and decorations in stucco, by the hands of the best
and most excellent masters that he could find, without grudging any
expense that might be incurred. He had already set to work on the
sacristy, which he had placed in the great recess behind the high-altar,
and there the ornamentation of marble was already finished, and many
pictures had been painted by the Florentine painter Giovanni Antonio
Sogliani, the rest of which, together with the altar-pieces and the
chapels that were wanting, were finished many years afterwards by order
of M. Sebastiano della Seta, the Warden of the Duomo in those days.
At that time Perino returned from Genoa to Pisa, and, having seen that
beginning, at the instance of Battista del Cervelliera, a person well
conversant with art and a most ingenious master of wood-carving,
perspective, and inlaying, he was presented to the Warden. After they
had discoursed together on the subject of the works of the Duomo, Perino
was asked to paint an altar-piece for an ornament immediately within the
ordinary door of entrance, the ornamental frame being already finished,
and above that a scene of S. George slaying the Dragon and delivering
the King's Daughter. Perino therefore made a most beautiful design,
which included a row of children and other ornaments in fresco between
one chapel and the other, and niches with Prophets and scenes of various
kinds; and this design pleased the Warden. And so, having made the
cartoon for one of them, the first one, that opposite to the door
mentioned above, he began to execute it in colour, and finished six
children, which are very well painted. He was to have continued this
right round, which would have made a very rich and very beautiful
decoration; and the whole work together would have proved to be
something very handsome. But he was seized with a desire to return to
Genoa, where he had involved himself in love affairs and other
pleasures, to which he was inclined at certain times: and on his
departure he gave to the Nuns of S. Maffeo a little altar-piece that he
had painted for them in oils, which is now in their possession in the
convent. Then, having arrived in Genoa, he stayed there many months,
executing other works for the Prince.
His departure from Pisa displeased the Warden greatly, and even more the
circumstance that the work remained unfinished; wherefore he did not
cease to write to him every day that he should return, or to make
inquiries from Perino's wife, whom he had left in Pisa. But finally,
perceiving that the matter would never end, Perino neither answering nor
returning, he allotted the altar-piece of that chapel to Giovanni
Antonio Sogliani, who finished it and set it into its place. Not long
after this Perino returned to Pisa, and, seeing the work of Sogliani,
flew into a rage, and would on no account continue what he had begun,
saying that he did not choose that his pictures should serve as
ornaments for those of other masters; wherefore, so far as concerned
him, that work remained unfinished. Giovanni Antonio carried it on to
such purpose that he painted four altar-pieces: but these, at a later
date, appeared to Sebastiano della Seta, the new Warden, to be all in
the same manner, and somewhat less beautiful than the first, and he
allotted to Domenico Beccafumi of Siena--after proving his worth from
some pictures that he painted round the sacristy, which are very
beautiful--an altar-piece which he executed in Pisa. This not giving as
much satisfaction as the first pictures, he caused the two last that
were wanting to be painted by Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo; and they were
placed at the two doors beside the corner-walls of the main façade of
the church. Of these, as well as of many other works, both large and
small, that are dispersed throughout Italy and various places abroad, it
does not become me to say more, and I will leave the right of free
judgment about them to all who have seen or may see them. The loss of
this work caused real vexation to Perino, he having already made the
designs for it, which gave promise that it would prove to be something
worthy of him, and likely to give that temple great fame over and above
that of its antiquities, and also to make Perino immortal.
During the many years of his sojourn in Genoa, although he drew both
profit and pleasure from that city, Perino had grown weary of it, as he
remembered Rome in the happy days of Leo. But although, during the
lifetime of Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, he had received letters
inviting him into his service, and he had been disposed to enter it, the
death of that lord brought it about that he hesitated to repatriate
himself. While matters stood thus, with his many friends urging his
return, himself desiring it infinitely more than any of them, and
several letters being exchanged, one morning, in the end, the fancy took
him, and without saying a word he set off from Pisa and made his way to
Rome. There, after making himself known to the most reverend Cardinal
Farnese, and then to Pope Paul, he stayed many months without doing
anything; first, because he was put off from one day to another, and
then because he was attacked by some infirmity in one of his arms, on
account of which he spent several hundreds of crowns, to say nothing of
the discomfort, before he could be cured of it. Wherefore, having no one
to maintain him, and being vexed by his cold welcome from the Court, he
was tempted many times to go away; but Molza and many other friends
exhorted him to have patience, telling him that Rome was no longer what
she had been, and that now she expected that a man should be exhausted
and weary of her before she would choose and cherish him as her own, and
particularly if he were pursuing the path of some fine art.
At this time M. Pietro de' Massimi bought a chapel in the Trinità, with
the vaulting and the lunettes painted and adorned with stucco, and the
altar-piece painted in oils, all by Giulio Romano and Perino's
brother-in-law, Giovan Francesco; and that gentleman was desirous to
have it finished. In the lunettes were four stories of S. Mary Magdalene
in fresco, and in the altar-piece in oils was Christ appearing to Mary
Magdalene in the form of a gardener; and M. Pietro first caused a gilt
frame of wood to be made for the altar-piece, which had a miserable one
of stucco, and then allotted the walls to Perino, who, having caused the
staging and the screen to be erected, set his hand to the work, and
after many months brought it to completion. He made a design of bizarre
and beautiful grotesques, partly in low-relief and partly painted; and
he executed two little scenes of no great size, one on each wall,
surrounding them with an ornament in stucco of great variety. In one
scene was the Pool of Bethesda, with all the cripples and sick persons,
and the Angel who comes to move the waters, the porticoes seen most
beautifully foreshortened in perspective, and the movements and
vestments of the priests, all painted with great grace and vivacity,
although the figures are not very large. In the other, he painted the
Raising of Lazarus after he had been dead four days, wherein he is seen
newly restored to life, and still marked by the pallor and fear of
death: and round him are many who are unswathing him, and not a few who
are marvelling, and others struck with awe, besides which the scene is
adorned with some little temples that recede into the distance, executed
with supreme lovingness, as are also the works in stucco all around.
There are likewise four very small scenes, two to each wall, and one on
either side of the larger scene; in one of which is the Centurion
beseeching Christ that He should heal with a word his son who is dying,
in another Christ driving the traders from the Temple, in a third the
Transfiguration, and in the last a similar scene. And on the projections
of the pilasters within the chapel he painted four figures in the guise
of Prophets, which, in their proportions, their excellence, and their
beauty, are as well executed and finished as they could well be. In a
word, the whole work was carried out with such diligence, and is so
delicate, that it resembles miniature rather than painting. In it may be
seen much charm and vivacity of colouring, and signs of great patience
in its execution, revealing that true love which should be felt for art;
and he painted this whole work with his own hand, although he had a
great part of the stucco-work executed after his designs by Guglielmo
Milanese, whom he had formerly had with him at Genoa, loving him much,
and once even offering to give him his daughter in marriage. This
Guglielmo, in reward for restoring the antiquities of the house of
Farnese, has now been made Friar of the Piombo, in the place of Fra
Sebastiano Viniziano.
I must not omit to tell that against one wall of this chapel was a most
beautiful tomb of marble, with a dead woman of marble, beautifully
carved by the sculptor Bologna, on the sarcophagus, and two little naked
boys at the sides. The countenance of that woman was a lifelike
portrait of a very famous courtezan of Rome, who left that memorial of
herself, which was removed by the friars because they felt scruples that
such a woman should have been laid to rest there with so much honour.
This work, with many designs that he made, was the reason that the very
reverend Cardinal Farnese began to give him an allowance and to make use
of him in many works. By order of Pope Paul, a chimney-piece that was in
the Chamber of the Burning of the Borgo was placed in that of the
Segnatura, where there were the panellings with perspective views in
wood executed by the hand of the carver Fra Giovanni for Pope Julius.
Raffaello had painted both of those chambers; but it became necessary to
repaint all the base to the scenes in the Chamber of the Segnatura,
which is that in which is the picture of Mount Parnassus. On which
account a decorative design in imitation of marble was painted by
Perino, with various terminal figures, festoons, masks, and other
ornaments; and, in certain spaces, scenes painted to look like bronze,
which are very beautiful for works in fresco. In these scenes, even as
above them were Philosophers discoursing on Philosophy, Theologians on
Theology, and Poets on Poetry, were all the actions of those who have
been eminent in those professions. And although he did not execute them
all with his own hand, he retouched them so much "a secco," besides
making perfectly finished cartoons, that they may almost be said to be
entirely by his hand; which method he employed because, being troubled
by a catarrh, he was not fit for so much labour. Whereupon the Pope,
recognizing that he deserved something both on account of his age and
for all his work, and hearing him much recommended, gave him an
allowance of twenty-five ducats a month, which lasted up to his death,
on the condition that he should have charge of the Palace and of the
house of the Farnese family.
By this time Michelagnolo Buonarroti had uncovered the wall with the
Last Judgment in the Papal Chapel, and there remained still unpainted
the base below, where there was to be fixed a screen of arras woven in
silk and gold, like the tapestries that adorn the Chapel. Wherefore, the
Pope having ordained that the weaving should be done in Flanders, it
was arranged with the consent of Michelagnolo that Perino should begin
to paint a canvas of the same size, which he did, executing in it women,
children and terminal figures, holding festoons, and all very lifelike,
with the most bizarre things of fancy; but this work, which was truly
worthy of him and of the divine picture that it was to adorn, remained
unfinished after his death in some apartments of the Belvedere.
After this, Antonio da San Gallo having finished the building of the
Great Hall of Kings in front of the Chapel of Sixtus IV in the Papal
Palace, Perino divided the ceiling into a large pattern of octagonal
compartments, crosses, and ovals, both sunk and in relief; which done,
Perino was also commissioned to adorn it with stucco-work, with the
richest and most beautiful ornaments that could be produced by all the
resources of that art. He thus began it, and in the octagons, in place
of rosettes, he made four little boys in full relief, who, with their
feet pointing to the centre and their arms forming a circle, make a most
beautiful rosette, and in the rest of the compartments are all the
devices of the house of Farnese, with the arms of the Pope in the centre
of the vaulting. And this work in stucco may be said with truth to have
surpassed in mastery of execution, in beauty, and in delicacy, all those
that have ever been done by ancients or moderns, and to be truly worthy
of the head of the Christian religion. After the designs of the same
man, likewise, the glass windows were executed by Pastorino da Siena, an
able master of that craft; and Perino caused the walls below to be
prepared with very beautiful ornaments in stucco, intending to paint
scenes there with his own hand, which were afterwards continued by the
painter Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, who, if death had not cut
short the noble aspirations that he had, would have proved how the
moderns have the courage not only to equal the ancients with their
works, but perhaps even to surpass them by a great measure.
While the stucco-work of this vaulting was in progress, and Perino was
considering the designs for his scenes, the old walls of the Church of
S. Pietro at Rome were being pulled down to make way for those of the
new building, and the masons came to a wall where there was a Madonna,
with other pictures, by the hand of Giotto; which being seen by Perino,
who was in the company of Messer Niccolò Acciaiuoli, a Florentine doctor
and much his friend, both of them were moved to pity for that picture
and would not allow it to be destroyed; nay, having caused the wall to
be cut away around it, they had it well braced with beams and bars of
iron and deposited below the organ of S. Pietro, in a place where there
was neither altar nor any other consecrated object. And before the wall
that had been round the Madonna was pulled down, Perino copied the
figure of Orso dell' Anguillara, the Roman Senator who had crowned M.
Francesco Petrarca on the Campidoglio, and who was at the feet of that
Madonna. Round the picture of the Madonna were to be made some ornaments
in stucco and painting, and together with them a memorial to a certain
Niccolò Acciaiuoli, who had formerly been a Roman Senator; and Perino,
having made the designs, straightway set his hand to the work, and,
assisted by his young men and by Marcello Mantovano, his disciple,
carried it out with great diligence.
In the same S. Pietro the Sacrament did not occupy, with regard to
masonry, a very honourable position; wherefore certain deputies were
appointed from the Company of the Sacrament, who ordained that a chapel
should be built in the centre of the old church by Antonio da San Gallo,
partly with remains in the form of ancient marble columns, and partly
with other ornaments of marble, bronze, and stucco, placing in the
centre a tabernacle by the hand of Donatello, by way of further
adornment; and Perino executed there a very beautiful ceiling with many
minute scenes full of figures from the Old Testament, symbolical of the
Sacrament. In the middle of it, also, he painted a somewhat larger
scene, containing the Last Supper of Christ with the Apostles, and below
it two Prophets, one on either side of the body of Christ.
The same master, likewise, caused his young men to paint in the Church
of S. Giuseppe, near the Ripetta, the chapel of that church, which was
afterwards retouched and finished by himself; and he also had a chapel
painted after his designs in the Church of S. Bartolommeo in Isola,
which he retouched in like manner, and caused some scenes to be painted
at the high-altar of S. Salvatore del Lauro, with some grotesques on the
vaulting, and likewise an Annunciation on the façade outside, which was
executed by his pupil, Girolamo Sermoneta. Thus, then, partly because he
was not able, and partly because the labour wearied him, liking to
design his works rather than to execute them, he pursued the same course
that Raffaello da Urbino had formerly followed at the end of his life.
How harmful and how blameworthy is this practice, is proved by the Chigi
works and by all those carried out by other hands, and is also shown by
those that Perino caused to be executed in the same way; besides which,
those works of Giulio Romano's that he did not paint with his own hand
have not done him much honour. And although this method pleases Princes,
giving them their works quickly, and perhaps benefits the craftsmen who
labour upon them, yet, if they were the ablest men in the world, they
could never feel that love for the works of others which a man feels for
his own. Nor, however well drawn the cartoons may be, can they be
imitated as exactly and as thoroughly as by the hand of their author,
who, seeing the work going to ruin, in despair leaves it to fall into
complete destruction. He, then, who thirsts for honour, should do his
own painting. This I can say from experience, for after I had laboured
with the greatest possible pains on the cartoons for the Hall of the
Cancelleria in the Palace of S. Giorgio in Rome, the work having to be
executed with great haste in a hundred days, a vast number of painters
were employed to paint it, who departed so far from their outlines and
their true form, that I made a resolution, to which I have adhered, that
from that time onward no one should lay a hand on any works of mine.
Whoever, therefore, wishes to ensure long life for his name and his
works, should undertake fewer and do them all with his own hand, if he
desires to obtain that full meed of honour that a man of exalted genius
seeks to acquire.
I say, then, that Perino, by reason of the number of the labours
committed to his care, was forced to employ many persons; and he
thirsted rather for gain than for glory, considering that he had thrown
away his life and had saved nothing in his youth. And it vexed him so
much to see young men coming forward to undertake work, that he sought
to enroll them all under his own command, to the end that they might not
encroach on his position. Now in the year 1546 there came to Rome the
Venetian Tiziano da Cadore, a painter highly celebrated for his
portraits, who, having formerly taken a portrait of Pope Paul at the
time when His Holiness went to Busseto, without exacting any
remuneration either for that or for some others that he had executed for
Cardinal Farnese and Santa Fiore, was received by those prelates with
the greatest honour in the Belvedere; at which a rumour arose in the
Court, and then spread throughout Rome, to the effect that he had come
in order to paint scenes with his own hand in the Hall of Kings in the
Palace, where Perino was to paint them and the stucco-work was already
in progress. This arrival caused much vexation to Perino, and he
complained of it to many of his friends, not because he believed that
Tiziano was likely to surpass him at painting historical scenes in
fresco, but because he desired to occupy himself with that work
peacefully and honourably until his death, and, if he was to do it, he
wished to do it without competition, the wall and the vaulting by
Michelagnolo in the Chapel close by being more than enough for him by
way of comparison. That suspicion was the reason that while Tiziano
stayed in Rome, Perino always avoided him, and remained in an ill-humour
until his departure.