in another hall, which are held to be
among the best works that he ever made, although it is true that he was
assisted in this work by Cesare da Milano.

After these labours, having returned to Rome, Baldassarre formed a very
strait friendship with Agostino Chigi of Siena, both because Agostino
had a natural love for every man of talent, and because Baldassarre
called himself a Sienese. And thus, with the help of so great a man, he
was able to maintain himself while studying the antiquities of Rome, and
particularly those in architecture, wherein, out of rivalry with
Bramante, in a short time he made marvellous proficience, which
afterwards brought him, as will be related, very great honour and
profit. He also gave attention to perspective, and became such a master
of that science, that we have seen few in our own times who have worked
in it as well as he. Pope Julius II having meanwhile built a corridor in
his Palace, with an aviary near the roof, Baldassarre painted there, in
chiaroscuro, all the months of the year and the pursuits that are
practised in each of them. In this work may be seen an endless number of
buildings, theatres, amphitheatres, palaces, and other edifices, all
distributed with beautiful invention in that place. He then painted, in
company with other painters, some apartments in the Palace of S. Giorgio
for Cardinal Raffaello Riario, Bishop of Ostia; and he painted a facade
opposite to the house of Messer Ulisse da Fano, and also that of the
same Messer Ulisse, wherein he executed stories of Ulysses that brought
him very great renown and fame.

Even greater was the fame that came to him from the model of the Palace
of Agostino Chigi, executed with such beautiful grace that it seems not
to have been built, but rather to have sprung into life; and with his
own hand he decorated the exterior with most beautiful scenes in
terretta. The hall, likewise, is adorned with rows of columns executed
in perspective, which, with the depth of the intercolumniation, cause it
to appear much larger. But what is the greatest marvel of all is a
loggia that may be seen over the garden, painted by Baldassarre with
scenes of the Medusa turning men into stone, such that nothing more
beautiful can be imagined; and then there is Perseus cutting off her
head, with many other scenes in the spandrels of that vaulting, while
the ornamentation, drawn in perspective with colours, in imitation of
stucco, is so natural and lifelike