tion in company with Giovan Battista Cungi
of the Borgo, my assistant, to drawing all that I had left not drawn the
other times that I had been in Rome, and particularly everything that
was in the underground grottoes. Nor did I leave anything either in
architecture or in sculpture that I did not draw and measure, insomuch
that I can say with truth that the drawings that I made in that space of
time were more than three hundred; and for many years afterwards I found
pleasure and advantage in examining them, refreshing the memory of the
things of Rome. And how much those labours and studies benefited me, was
seen after my return to Tuscany in the altar-picture that I executed at
Monte Sansovino, in which I painted with a somewhat better manner the
Assumption of Our Lady, and at the foot, besides the Apostles who are
about the sepulchre, S. Augustine and S. Romualdo. Having then gone to
Camaldoli, according as I had promised those eremite fathers, I painted
in the other altar-piece of the tramezzo[4] the Nativity of Jesus
Christ, representing a night illumined by the Splendour of the newborn
Christ, who is surrounded by some Shepherds adoring Him; in doing which,
I strove to imitate with colours the rays of the sun, and copied the
figures and all the other things in that work from Nature and in the
proper light, to the end that they might be as similar as possible to
the reality. Then, since that light could not pass above the hut, from
there upwards and all around I availed myself of a light that comes from
the splendour of the Angels that are in the air, singing Gloria in
Excelsis Deo; not to mention that in certain places the Shepherds that
are around make light with burning sheaves of straw, and also the Moon
and the Star, and the Angel that is appearing to certain Shepherds. For
the building, then, I made some antiquities after my own fancy, with
broken statues and other things of that kind. In short, I executed that
work with all my power and knowledge, and although I did not satisfy
with the hand and the brush my great desire and eagerness to work
supremely well, nevertheless the picture has pleased many; wherefore
Messer Fausto Sabeo, a man of great learning who was then custodian of
the Pope's Library, and some others after him, wrote many Latin verses
in praise of that picture, moved perhaps more by affectionate feeling
than by the excellence of the work. Be that as it may, if there be in it
anything of the good,