to seize the Abbot and some
monks who had had some words with the Black Friars in a procession, over
a matter of precedence. But the monks made some resistance, assisted by
about fifteen young men who were assisting me in stucco-work and
painting, and wounded some of the bailiffs; on which account it became
necessary to get them out of the way, and they went off in various
directions. And so I, left almost alone, was unable not only to execute
the loggie at Pozzuolo, but also to paint twenty-four pictures of
stories from the Old Testament and from the life of S. John the Baptist,
which, not caring to remain any longer in Naples, I took to Rome to
finish, whence I sent them, and they were placed about the stalls and
over the presses of walnut-wood made from my architectural designs in
the Sacristy of S. Giovanni Carbonaro, a convent of Eremite and
Observantine Friars of S. Augustine, for whom I had painted a short time
before, for a chapel without their church, a panel-picture of Christ
Crucified, with a rich and varied ornament of stucco, at the request of
Seripando, their General, who afterwards became a Cardinal. In like
manner, half-way up the staircase of the same convent, I painted in
fresco a S. John the Evangelist who stands gazing at Our Lady clothed
with the sun and crowned with twelve stars, with her feet upon the moon.
In the same city I painted for Messer Tommaso Cambi, a Florentine
merchant and very much my friend, the times and seasons of the year on
four walls in the hall of his house, with pictures of Sleep and Dreaming
over a terrace where I made a fountain. And for the Duke of Gravina I
painted an altar-picture of the Magi adoring Christ, which he took to
his dominions; and for Orsanca, Secretary to the Viceroy, I executed
another altar-piece with five figures around a Christ Crucified, and
many pictures.

But, although I was regarded with favour by those lords and was earning
much, and my commissions were multiplying every day, I judged, since my
men had departed and I had executed works in abundance in one year in
that city, that it would be well for me to return to Rome. Which having
done, the first work that I executed was for Signor Ranuccio Farnese, at
that time Archbishop of Naples; painting on canvas and in oils four very
large shutters for the organ of the Piscopio in Naples, on the front of
which are five Patron Saints of that city, and on the inner side the
Nativity of Jesus Christ, with th