the disposition of the stairs; but he was not
able to see this work finished, for he was overtaken by death.

And yet, although the talents and labours of this noble craftsman were
so great, they brought much more benefit to others than to himself; for,
while he was employed by Popes, Cardinals, and other great and rich
persons, not one of them ever gave him any remarkable reward. That this
should have happened is not surprising, not so much through want of
liberality in such patrons, although for the most part they are least
liberal where they should be the very opposite, as through the timidity
and excessive modesty, or rather, to be more exact in this case, the
lack of shrewdness of Baldassarre. To tell the truth, in proportion as
one should be discreet with magnanimous and liberal Princes, so should
one always be pressing and importunate with such as are miserly,
unthankful, and discourteous, for the reason that, even as in the case
of the generous importunate asking would always be a vice, so with the
miserly it is a virtue, and with such men it is discretion that would be
the vice.

In the last years of his life, then, Baldassarre found himself poor and
weighed down by his family. Finally, having always lived a life without
reproach, he fell grievously ill, and took to his bed; and Pope Paul
III, hearing this, and recognizing too late the harm that he was like to
suffer in the loss of so great a man, sent Jacopo Melighi, the
accountant of S. Pietro, to give him a present of one hundred crowns,
and to make him most friendly offers. However, his sickness increased,
either because it was so ordained, or, as many believe, because his
death was hastened with poison by some rival who desired his place, from
which he drew two hundred and fifty crowns of salary; and, the
physicians discovering this too late, he died, very unwilling to give up
his life, more on account of his poor family than for his own sake, as
he thought in what sore straits he was leaving them. He was much
lamented by his children and his friends, and he received honourable
burial, next to Raffaello da Urbino, in the Ritonda, whither he was
followed by all the painters, sculptors, and architects of Rome, doing
him honour and bewailing him; with the following epitaph:

BALTHASARI PERUTIO SENENSI, VIRO ET PICTURA ET ARCHITECTURA
ALIISQUE INGENIORUM ARTIBUS ADEO EXCELLENTI, UT SI PRISCORUM
OCCUBUISSET TEMPORIBUS, NOSTRA ILLUM FELICIUS LEGERENT. V