but only art, although it would have
been easy to establish myself with Signor Cosimo de' Medici, the new
Duke. And so, while carrying forward in Arezzo the above-named
altar-picture and the facade of S. Rocco, with the ornament, I was
making preparations to go to Rome, when by means of M. Giovanni
Pollastra--and by the will of God, to whom I have always commended
myself, and to whom I attribute and have always attributed my every
blessing--I was invited to Camaldoli, the centre of the Camaldolese
Congregation, by the fathers of that hermitage, to see that which they
were designing to have done in their church. Arriving there, I found
supreme pleasure in the Alpine and eternal solitude and quietness of
that holy place; and although I became aware at the first moment that
those fathers of venerable aspect were beside themselves at seeing me so
young, I took heart and talked to them to such purpose, that they
resolved that they would avail themselves of my hand in the many
pictures in oils and in fresco that were to be painted in their church
of Camaldoli. Now, while they wished that before any other thing I
should execute the picture of the high-altar, I proved to them with good
reasons that it was better to paint first one of the lesser pictures,
which were going in the tramezzo,[2] and that, having finished it, if it
should please them, I would be able to continue. Besides that, I would
not make any fixed agreement with them as to money, but said that if my
work, when finished, were to please them, they might pay me for it as
they chose, and, if it did not please them, they might return it to me,
and I would keep it for myself most willingly; which condition appearing
to them only too honest and loving, they were content that I should set
my hand to the work. They said to me, then, that they wished to have in
it Our Lady with her Son in her arms, and S. John the Baptist and S.
Jerome, who were both hermits and lived in woods and forests; and I
departed from the hermitage and made my way down to their Abbey of
Camaldoli, where, having made a design with great rapidity, which
pleased them, I began the altar-piece, and in two months had it
completely finished and set in place, to the great satisfaction of those
fathers, as they gave me to understand, and of myself. And in that
period of two months I proved how much more one is assisted in studies
by sweet tranquillity and honest solitude than by the noises of public
squar