there to the labours of the arts; and he declared
that it would be better to return to Rome, the true school of noble
arts, where ability was recognized much more than in Venice. The
dissuasions of Cristofano being thus added to the little desire that
Vasari had to stay there, they went off together. But, since
Cristofano, being an exile from the State of Florence, was not able to
follow Giorgio, he returned to S. Giustino, where he did not remain
long, doing some work all the time for the above-mentioned Abbot,
before he went to Perugia on the first occasion when Pope Paul III
went there after the war waged with the people of that city. There, in
the festive preparations that were made to receive his Holiness, he
acquitted himself very well in several works, and particularly in the
portal called after Frate Rinieri, where, at the wish of Monsignore
della Barba, who was then governor there, Cristofano executed a large
Jove in Anger and another Pacified, which are two most beautiful
figures, and on the other side he painted an Atlas with the world on
his back, between two women, one of whom had a sword and the other a
pair of scales. These works, with many others that Cristofano executed
for those festivities, were the reason that afterwards, when the
citadel had been built in Perugia by order of the same Pontiff, Messer
Tiberio Crispo, who was governor and castellan at that time, when
causing many of the rooms to be painted, desired that Cristofano, in
addition to that which Lattanzio, a painter of the March, had executed
in them up to that time, should also work there. Whereupon Cristofano
not only assisted the above-named Lattanzio, but afterwards executed
with his own hand the greater part of the best works that are painted
in the apartments of that fortress, in which there also worked
Raffaello dal Colle and Adone Doni of Assisi, an able and
well-practised painter, who has executed many things in his native
city and in other places. Tommaso Papacello also worked there; but the
best that there was among them, and the one who gained most praise
there, was Cristofano, on which account he was recommended by
Lattanzio to the favour of the said Crispo, and was ever afterwards
much employed by him.

Meanwhile, that same Crispo having built in Perugia a new little
church known as S. Maria del Popolo, but first called Del Mercato,
Lattanzio had begun for it an altar-piece in oils, and in this
Cristofano painted with his ow