wakens from his sleep, a spark
from the lamp having scorched him. Those figures, all nude and large as
life, were the reason that Alfonso di Tommaso Cambi, who was then a very
beautiful youth, well-lettered, accomplished, and most gentle and
courteous, had himself portrayed nude and at full length in the person
of the huntsman Endymion beloved by the Moon, whose white form, and the
fanciful landscape all around, have their light from the brightness of
the moon, which in the darkness of the night makes an effect passing
natural and true, for the reason that I strove with all diligence to
counterfeit the peculiar colours that the pale yellow light of the moon
is wont to give to the things upon which it strikes. After this, I
painted two pictures for sending to Ragusa, in one Our Lady, and in the
other a Pieta; and then in a great picture for Francesco Botti Our Lady
with her Son in her arms, and Joseph; and that picture, which I
certainly executed with the greatest diligence that I knew, he took with
him to Spain. These works finished, I went in the same year to see
Cardinal di Monte at Bologna, where he was Legate, and, dwelling with
him for some days, besides many other conversations, he contrived to
speak so well and to persuade me with such good reasons, that, being
constrained by him to do a thing which up to that time I had refused to
do, I resolved to take a wife, and so, by his desire, married a daughter
of Francesco Bacci, a noble citizen of Arezzo. Having returned to
Florence, I executed a great picture of Our Lady after a new invention
of my own and with more figures, which was acquired by Messer Bindo
Altoviti, who gave me a hundred crowns of gold for it and took it to
Rome, where it is now in his house. Besides this, I painted many other
pictures at the same time, as for Messer Bernardetto de' Medici, for
Messer Bartolommeo Strada, an eminent physician, and for others of my
friends, of whom there is no need to speak.

In those days, Gismondo Martelli having died in Florence, and having
left instructions in his testament that an altar-picture with Our Lady
and some Saints should be painted for the chapel of that noble family in
S. Lorenzo, Luigi and Pandolfo Martelli, together with M. Cosimo
Bartoli, all very much my friends, besought me that I should execute
that picture. Having obtained leave from the Lord Duke Cosimo, the
Patron and first Warden of Works of that church, I consented to do it,
but on conditi