sooner did His Holiness ride forth, which was his very frequent custom, to the Magliana,[1] than they gained admission, by means of their friends, to the rooms so often mentioned, and there they would remain from morning till night without anything better to eat than a morsel of bread, and being very nearly frozen with the cold.
The Cardinal Salviati having subsequently commanded Francesco to paint in fresco that chapel of his palace wherein he heard mass every morning, and the subject chosen being stories from the Life of San Giovanni Battista, Francesco set himself to study the nude figure from the life; this he did in a bathing house that was near his dwelling, still accompanied by Giorgio, and at that time they also made several dissections in the Campo Santo.
The spring having at length appeared, and the Cardinal Ippolito being despatched by the Pope into Hungary, that Prelate gave orders before his departure, to the effect, that Vasari should be sent to Florence, there to execute certain pictures, and copies of pictures, which were then to be forwarded to Rome. But in July of that year, what with the fatigues he had borne in the winter, and the heats of the summer, Vasari fell sick, and was carried in a litter to Arezzo, much to the grief of Francesco, who became ill also and was on the point of death. He did, nevertheless, recover at length, and then received a commission, by the intervention of the master in woodcarving, Antonio Labacco, to paint a fresco for Maestro Filippo da Siena, in a niche over a door behind the Church of Santa Maria della Pace. The subject of this work is our Saviour Christ, speaking with San Filippo, and in two angles are the Virgin with the Angel of the Annunciation. The execution of the whole work pleased Maestro Filippo very greatly, insomuch that it caused him to offer a second commission to Francesco, a large picture namely, to be painted in the same place. This was likewise a story of the Madonna, her Assumption that is to say, and it occupied one of the eight sides of the Church above mentioned, which compartment had not previously received any decoration.[2]
