the goldsmith Francesco di Girolamo, of Prato, Nannoccio of San Giorgio,nota and many others, who proved at a later period to be very excellent masters in their vocations.
At this period, Francesco and Giorgio Vasari, being at that time both children, formed an intimacy in the following manner. In the year 1523, Silvio Passerini, the Cardinal of Cortona, chancing to pass through Arezzo, Antonio Vasari, who was his kinsman, conducted his eldest sou Giorgio to pay his duty to that prelate. The Cardinal, therefore, finding that this child, who was then but nine years old, had been so carefully instructed in the first rudiments of learning, by Messer Antonio da Saccone and by the excellent Aretine poet, Messer Giovanni Pollastra,nota that he could repeat a large part of the Æneid of Virgil by heart, while he had also been brought forward in drawing by the French painter Guglielmo da Marcilla;nota seeing this, I say, the Cardinal made an arrangement with Antonio Vasari, to the end that the latter should himself conduct the child to Florence.
Here Giorgio was placed in the house of Messer Niccolò Vespucci, a knight of Rhodes, whose dwelling was beside the Ponte Vecchio and near the Church of the Sepulchre; he was then sent to study under Michelagnolo Buonarroti. This circumstance attracted the notice of Francesco, who was at that time living in the lane beside the residence of Messer Bivigliano (where his father employed many workmen in a large house, with its front looking on the Vacchereccia, which he had rented there); and, as every creature loves its like, he contrived in such sort, that by means of Messer Marco da Lodi, who was a gentleman belonging to the above-named Cardinal of Cortona, he established an acquaintanceship with the said Giorgio, Messer Marco having showed to Giorgio a portrait, which pleased the boy very greatly, and which had been executed by Francesco, who had shortly before devoted himself to painting under the discipline of Giuliano Bugiardini.nota the Life of Valerio Vicentino, for which see vol. iii. p. 467, et seq. This appears from a document discovered by Manni, and cited by Bottari.
- Of whom there is further mention hereafter.
t Already more than once alluded to, as in the Life of Rosso, and of Lappoli, for which see vol. iii. p. 304, and vol. iv. p. 146.
+ Whose Life will be found in vol. iii. p. 65.
§ For the Life of this artist see vol. iv. p. 296, et seq.
