In the year 1551, Stefano Veltroni, of Monte Sansovino--having received
orders from the Pope and from Vasari to have adorned with grotesques the
apartments of the villa on the hill without the Porta del Popolo, which
had belonged to Cardinal Poggio--summoned Taddeo, and caused him to
paint in the central picture a figure of Opportunity, who, having seized
Fortune by the locks, appears to be about to cut them with her shears
(the device of that Pope); in which Taddeo acquitted himself very well.
Then, Vasari having made before any of the others the designs for the
court and the fountain at the foot of the new Palace, which were
afterwards carried on by Vignuola and Ammanati and built by Baronino,
Prospero Fontana, in painting many pictures there, as will be related
hereafter, availed himself not a little of Taddeo in many things. And
these were the cause of even greater benefits for him, for the Pope,
liking his method of working, commissioned him to paint in some
apartments, above the corridor of the Belvedere, some little figures in
colour that served as friezes for those apartments; and in an open
loggia, behind those that faced towards Rome, he painted in chiaroscuro
on the wall, with figures as large as life, all the Labours of
Hercules, which were destroyed in the time of Pope Paul IV, when other
apartments and a chapel were built there. At the Vigna of Pope Julius,
in the first apartments of the Palace, he executed some scenes in
colour, and in particular one of Mount Parnassus, in the centre of the
ceilings, and in the court of the same he painted in chiaroscuro two
scenes of the history of the Sabines, which are one on either side of
the principal door of variegated marble that leads into the loggia,
whence one descends to the fountain of the Acqua Vergine; all which
works were much commended and extolled.

Now Federigo, while Taddeo was in Rome with the Duke, had returned to
Urbino, and he had lived there and at Pesaro ever since; but Taddeo,
after the works described above, caused him to return to Rome, in order
to make use of him in executing a great frieze in a hall, with others in
other rooms, of the house of the Giambeccari on the Piazza di S.
Apostolo, and in other friezes that he painted in the house of M.
Antonio Portatore at the Obelisk of S. Mauro, all full of figures and
other things, which were held to be very beautiful. Maestro Mattivolo,
the Master of the Post, bought in the time of Pope Julius a