thinking of any danger, in
the midst of the soldiers of the guard, they took the pieces of that arm
and carried them to the house of Michelagnolo, the father of Francesco,
in the Chiasso di M. Bivigliano. From which house having afterwards
recovered them, Duke Cosimo in time caused them to be restored to their
places with pegs of copper.

After this, the Medici being in exile, and with them the above-mentioned
Cardinal of Cortona, Antonio Vasari took his son back to Arezzo, to the
no little regret of Giorgio and Francesco, who loved one another as
brothers. But they did not long remain separated from each other, for
the reason that after the plague, which came in the following August,
had killed Giorgio's father and the best part of his family, he was so
pressed with letters by Francesco, who also came very near dying of
plague, that he returned to Florence. There, working with incredible
zeal for a period of two years, being driven by necessity and by the
desire to learn, they made marvellous proficience, having recourse,
together with the above-named Nannoccio da San Giorgio, to the workshop
of the painter Raffaello da Brescia, under whom Francesco, being the one
who had most need to provide himself with the means to live, executed
many little pictures.

Having come to the year 1529, since it did not appear to Francesco that
staying in Brescia's workshop was doing him much good, he and Nannoccio
went to work with Andrea del Sarto, and stayed with him all the time
that the siege lasted, but in such discomfort, that they repented that
they had not followed Giorgio, who spent that year in Pisa with the
goldsmith Manno, giving his attention for four months to the goldsmith's
craft to occupy himself. Vasari having then gone to Bologna, at the time
when the Emperor Charles V was crowned there by Clement VII, Francesco,
who had remained in Florence, executed on a little panel a votive
picture for a soldier who had been murderously attacked in bed by
certain other soldiers during the siege; and although it was a paltry
thing, he studied it and executed it to perfection. That votive picture
fell not many years ago into the hands of Giorgio Vasari, who presented
it to the reverend Don Vincenzio Borghini, the Director of the Hospital
of the Innocenti, who holds it dear. For the Black Friars of the Badia
Francesco painted three little scenes on a Tabernacle of the Sacrament
made by the carver Tasso in the manner of a triumphal