Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il SodomaVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il Sodoma
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
During this time there arrived in Siena Agostino Chigi, a very rich
and famous merchant of that city, and he became acquainted with
Giovanni Antonio, both on account of his follies and because he had
the name of a good painter. Wherefore he took him in his company to
Rome, where Pope Julius II was then causing the Papal apartments in
the Palace of the Vatican, which Pope Nicholas V had formerly erected,
to be painted; and Chigi so went to work with the Pope, that some
painting was given also to Sodoma. Now Pietro Perugino, who was
painting the ceiling of an apartment that is beside the Borgia Tower,
was working at his ease, like the old man that he was, and was not
able to set his hand to anything else, as he had been at first
commanded to do: and there was given to Giovanni Antonio to paint
another apartment, which is beside the one that Perugino was painting.
Having therefore set his hand to it, he made the ornamentation of that
ceiling with cornices, foliage, and friezes; and then, in some large
medallions, he executed certain passing good scenes in fresco. But
this animal, devoting his attention to his beasts and his follies,
would not press the work forward; and therefore, after Raffaello da
Urbino had been brought to Rome by the architect Bramante, and it had
become known to the Pope how much he surpassed the others, his
Holiness ordained that neither Perugino nor Giovanni Antonio should
work any more in the above-named apartments; indeed, that everything
should be thrown to the ground. But Raffaello, who was goodness and
modesty in person, left standing all that had been done by Perugino,
who had once been his master; and of Mattaccio's he destroyed nothing
save the inner work and the figures of the medallions and scenes,
leaving the friezes and the other ornaments, which are still round the
figures that Raffaello painted there, which were Justice, Universal
Knowledge, Poetry, and Theology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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