ards given into the charge of Jacopone da Bibbiena, the
master of the household, who was commanded to provide him with rooms and
with a place at the table of the pages. It appeared a strange thing to
Francesco that Giorgio should not have confided the matter to him; but
he was persuaded that he had done it for the best and with a good
intention.

When the above-named Jacopone, therefore, had given Giorgio some rooms
behind S. Spirito, near Francesco, the two devoted themselves in company
all that winter to the study of art, with much profit, leaving no
noteworthy work, either in the Palace or in any other part of Rome, that
they did not draw. And since, when the Pope was in the Palace, they were
not able to stay there drawing at their ease, as soon as his Holiness
had ridden forth to the Magliana, as he often did, they would gain
admittance by means of friends into those apartments to draw, and would
stay there from morning till night without eating anything but a little
bread, and almost freezing with cold. Cardinal Salviati having then
commanded Francesco that he should paint in fresco in the chapel of his
Palace, where he heard Mass every morning, some stories of the life of
S. John the Baptist, Francesco set himself to study nudes from life, and
Giorgio with him, in a bath-house near there; and afterwards they made
some anatomical studies in the Campo Santo.

The spring having then come, Cardinal Ippolito, being sent by the Pope
to Hungary, ordained that Giorgio should be sent to Florence, and should
there execute some pictures and portraits that he had to despatch to
Rome. But in the July following, what with the fatigues of the past
winter and the heat of summer, Giorgio fell ill and was carried by
litter to Arezzo, to the great sorrow of Francesco, who also fell sick
and was like to die. However, being restored to health, Francesco was
commissioned by Maestro Filippo da Siena, at the instance of Antonio
L'Abacco, a master-worker in wood, to paint in fresco in a niche over
the door at the back of S. Maria della Pace, a Christ speaking with S.
Filippo, and in two angles the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation;
which pictures, much pleasing Maestro Filippo, were the reason that he
caused him to paint the Assumption of Our Lady in the same place, in a
large square space that was not yet painted in one of the eight sides of
that temple. Whereupon Francesco, reflecting that he had to execute that
work not merely