church of Sant’ Agostino in Rome.[1] But to the end that I might execute this picture, with others which Tiberius Crispus, the Castellan of Sant’ Angelo, had commissioned me to paint, with the greater convenience, I had gone into the Trastevere, to the Palace beneath Sant’ Onofrio, formerly commenced by the Bishop Adimari, and finished by Salviati the Second,[2] when, finding myself exhausted, and becoming ill, in consequence of the many fatigues to which I had subjected myself, I was compelled to return to Florence. There I painted some other pictures, and among them one which afterwards became the property of Luca Martini, wherein there were the Portraits of Dante, Petrarch, Guido Cavalcanti, Boccaccio, Cino da Pistoja, and Guittone d’Arezzo; the likenesses being accurately copied from older portraits. There were subsequently many copies of these heads made from this work.
In that same year of 1544, I was invited to Naples by Don Giammatteo of Antwerp, General of the Monks of Monte Oliveto, to the end that I might paint the Refectory of a Monastery of theirs, built by the King Alfonso I.
But when I arrived in Naples and saw the Refectory, I was on the point of declining to undertake the work: the architecture of that Monastery being ancient, and the low ceilings, with their pointed arches, being almost wholly deprived of light, I feared there would be but little honour to be gained thereby. Persuaded, nevertheless, by Don Miniato Pitti and Don Ippolito da Milano, my intimate friends, I did finally agree to accept the commission; but seeing that no good could be effected in that place without a vast amount of ornaments which might dazzle the eyes of those who should examine the work, by the multiplicity and variety of the figures, I resolved to have all the ceiling of the Refectory worked in stucco; thus doing away, by rich compartments in the modern manner, with all that old-fashioned appearance and that heaviness of the arches. And here I was much aided by the tufa with which those walls and that ceiling were constructed, for this can be cut as one would cut wood, or rather bricks not perfectly baked, so that I found it possible to hollow out concavities of various forms at my pleasure, squares, ovals, or octangles; whereunto I could
