He was accustomed himself to prepare the cartoons, and afterwards having exacted from his pupils their completion, he went over the entire work with his pencil, removed its defects, impressing at the same time upon the whole the stamp of his own superior character. This method he acquired from Raffaello; and he is commended by Vasari as the best artist known for his production of distinguished pupils. It was the misfortune of Giulio to have the touches of his own hand in his labours at the Tè, modernized by other pencils, owing to which the beautiful fable of Psyche, the moral representations of human life, and his terrible war of the giants with Jove, where he appeared to compete with Michelangiolo himself in the hardihood of his design, still retain, indeed, the design and composition, but no longer the colours of Giulio. In these last his hand will more truly appear in his War of Troy, preserved at the royal court; in his history of Lucretia; and in those little cabinets ornamented by him with grotesques and other ingenious fancies. There we might sometimes pronounce him a Homer, treating of arms, or sometimes an Anacreon, celebrating the delights of wine and love. Nor did he employ his powers less nobly in sacred subjects, more particularly for the dome, which, by commission of the Cardinal Gonzaga, brother to Federigo, and guardian of his young nephew, he not only built, but in part ornamented, though his death occurred before he was enabled to complete his celebrated work. The paintings produced for other churches by his own hand are not very numerous; such, consisting more particularly of his Three Histories of the Passion, coloured in fresco, at S. Marco; of his Santo Cristoforo, in the large altar of that church, in which he is represented with an uncommon degree of strength, yet groaning under the burden of the Lord of the Universe, who in the figure of an infant is borne upon his shoulders; an incident originating in the name itself of _Cristoforo_. But let us come to the school of Giulio, in Mantua. It will not occupy many pages; since it did not mix the style of this artist, as in other places has happened, with foreign styles, being peculiarly true to its prototype, so that in each countenance we may trace, as it were, his own exact features, although copied unequally.