house of the Marchioness of Massa, near Maestro Pasquino, executing
it with great boldness of design and with supreme diligence.

In the third year of his pontificate Pope Leo paid a visit to Florence,
for which many triumphal preparations were made in that city, and Perino
went thither before the Court, partly in order to see the pomps of the
city, and partly from a wish to revisit his native country; and on a
triumphal arch at S. Trinita he made a large and very beautiful figure,
seven braccia high, while another was executed in competition with him
by Toto del Nunziata, who had already been his rival in boyhood. But to
Perino every hour seemed a thousand years until he could return to Rome,
for he perceived that the rules and methods of the Florentine craftsmen
were very different from those that were customary in Rome; wherefore he
departed from Florence and returned to Rome, where he resumed his usual
course of work. And in S. Eustachio dalla Dogana he painted a S. Peter
in fresco, which is a figure that has very strong relief, executed with
a simple flow of folds, and yet wrought with much design and judgment.

There was in Rome at this time the Archbishop of Cyprus, a man who was a
great lover of the arts, and particularly of painting; and he, having a
house near the Chiavica, where he had laid out a little garden with some
statues and other antiquities of truly noble beauty, and desiring to
enhance their effect with some fine decorations, sent for Perino, who
was very much his friend, and they came to the decision that he should
paint round the walls of that garden many stories of Bacchantes, Satyrs,
Fauns, and other wild things, in reference to an ancient statue of
Bacchus, seated beside a tiger, which the Archbishop had there. And so
Perino adorned that place with a variety of poetical fancies; and, among
other things, he painted there a little loggia with small figures,
various grotesques, and many landscapes, coloured with supreme grace and
diligence. This work has been held by craftsmen, as it always will be,
to be worthy of the highest praise; and it was the reason that he became
known to the Fugger family, merchants of Germany, who, having built a
house near the Banchi, on the way to the Church of the Florentines, and
having seen Perino's work and liked it, caused him to paint there a
courtyard and a loggia, with many figures, all worthy of the same praise
as the other works by his hand, for in them may b