ul inscriptions and mottoes composed by Giovio, and there is one
in particular which says that those pictures were all executed in a
hundred days; which, indeed, like a young man, I did do, being such that
I gave no thought to anything but satisfying that lord, who, as I have
said, desired to have the work finished in that time for a particular
purpose. But in truth, although I exerted myself greatly in making
cartoons and studying that work, I confess that I did wrong in putting
it afterwards in the hands of assistants, in order to execute it more
quickly, as I was obliged to do; for it would have been better to toil
over it a hundred months and do it with my own hand, whereby, although I
would not have done it in such a way as to satisfy my wish to please the
Cardinal and to maintain my own honour, I would at least have had the
satisfaction of having executed it with my own hand. However, that error
was the reason that I resolved that I would never again do any work
without finishing it entirely by myself over a first sketch done by the
hands of assistants from designs by my hand. In that work the Spaniards,
Bizzerra and Roviale, who laboured much in it in my company, gained no
little practice; and also Battista da Bagnacavallo of Bologna, Bastiano
Flori of Arezzo, Giovan Paolo dal Borgo, Fra Salvadore Foschi of Arezzo,
and many other young men.

At that time I went often in the evening, at the end of the day's work,
to see the above-named most illustrious Cardinal Farnese at supper,
where there were always present, to entertain him with beautiful and
honourable discourse, Molza, Annibale Caro, M. Gandolfo, M. Claudio
Tolomei, M. Romolo Amaseo, Monsignor Giovio, and many other men of
learning and distinction, of whom the Court of that Lord is ever full.
One evening among others the conversation turned to the museum of Giovio
and to the portraits of illustrious men that he had placed therein with
beautiful order and inscriptions; and one thing leading to another, as
happens in conversation, Monsignor Giovio said that he had always had
and still had a great desire to add to his museum and his book of
Eulogies a treatise with an account of the men who had been illustrious
in the art of design from Cimabue down to our own times. Enlarging on
this, he showed that he had certainly great knowledge and judgment in
the matters of our arts; but it is true that, being content to treat the
subject in gross, he did not consider it