courteous, had himself portrayed nude and at full length in the person of the huntsman Endymion beloved by the Moon, whose white form, and the fanciful landscape all around, have their light from the brightness of the moon, which in the darkness of the night makes an effect passing natural and true, for the reason that I strove with all diligence to counterfeit the peculiar colours that the pale yellow light of the moon is wont to give to the things upon which it strikes. After this, I painted two pictures for sending to Ragusa, in one Our Lady, and in the other a Pieta; and then in a great picture for Francesco Botti Our Lady with her Son in her arms, and Joseph; and that picture, which I certainly executed with the greatest diligence that I knew, he took with him to Spain. These works finished, I went in the same year to see Cardinal di Monte at Bologna, where he was Legate, and, dwelling with him for some days, besides many other conversations, he contrived to speak so well and to persuade me with such good reasons, that, being constrained by him to do a thing which up to that time I had refused to do, I resolved to take a wife, and so, by his desire, married a daughter of Francesco Bacci, a noble citizen of Arezzo. Having returned to Florence, I executed a great picture of Our Lady after a new invention of my own and with more figures, which was acquired by Messer Bindo Altoviti, who gave me a hundred crowns of gold for it and took it to Rome, where it is now in his house. Besides this, I painted many other pictures at the same time, as for Messer Bernardetto de' Medici, for Messer Bartolommeo Strada, an eminent physician, and for others of my friends, of whom there is no need to speak.