and those of Andrea were open to view, and the news
was brought to Francia that Andrea's works and his own had been
uncovered; at which he felt such resentment, that he was like to die of
it. Seized with anger against the friars on account of their presumption
and the little respect that they had shown to him, he set off at his
best speed and came up to the work; and then, climbing on to the
staging, which had not yet been taken to pieces, although the painting
had been uncovered, and seizing a mason's hammer that was there, he beat
some of the women's heads to fragments, and destroyed that of the
Madonna, and also tore almost completely away from the wall, plaster and
all, a nude figure that is breaking a rod. Hearing the noise, the friars
ran up, and, with the help of some laymen, seized his hands, to prevent
him from destroying it completely. But, although in time they offered to
give him double payment, he, on account of the hatred that he had
conceived for them, would never restore it. By reason of the reverence
felt by other painters both for him and for the work, they have refused
to finish it; and so it remains, even in our own day, as a memorial of
that event. This fresco is executed with such diligence and so much
love, and it is so beautiful in its freshness, that Francia may be said
to have worked better in fresco than any man of his time, and to have
blended and harmonized his paintings in fresco better than any other,
without needing to retouch the colours; wherefore he deserves to be much
extolled both for this and for his other works.

At Rovezzano, without the Porta alla Croce, near Florence, he painted a
shrine with a Christ on the Cross and some saints; and in S. Giovannino,
at the Porta a S. Piero Gattolini, he executed a Last Supper of the
Apostles in fresco.

No long time after, on the departure for France of the painter Andrea
del Sarto, who had begun to paint the stories of S. John the Baptist in
chiaroscuro in a cloister of the Company of the Scalzo at Florence, the
men of that Company, desiring to have that work finished, engaged
Francia, to the end that he, being an imitator of the manner of Andrea,
might complete the paintings begun by the other. Thereupon Francia
executed the decorations right round one part of that cloister, and
finished two of the scenes, which he painted with great diligence. These
are, first S. John the Baptist obtaining leave from his father Zacharias
to go into the d