its perfection, and all the more because Perino strove to paint it in a
dark manner, so that it has need of a strong light. He also made
drawings of the greater part of the AEneid, with the stories of Dido,
from which tapestries were woven; and he likewise drew beautiful
ornaments for the poops of galleys, which were carved and finished to
perfection by Carota and Tasso, wood-carvers of Florence, who proved
excellently well how able they were in that art. And in addition to all
these things he also executed a vast number of works on cloth for the
galleys of the Prince, and the largest standards that could be made for
their adornment and embellishment. Wherefore he was so beloved by that
Prince for his fine qualities, that, if he had continued to serve him,
the Prince would have richly rewarded his abilities.

But while he was working in Genoa, the fancy came to him to fetch his
wife from Rome, and so he bought a house in Pisa, being pleased with
that city and half thinking of choosing it as his place of habitation
when old age should come upon him. Now at that time the Warden of the
Duomo at Pisa was M. Antonio di Urbano, who had a very great desire to
embellish that temple, and had already caused a beginning to be made
with some very beautiful ornaments of marble for the chapels of the
church, which had been executed by the hand of Stagio da Pietrasanta, a
very able and well practised carver of marble: removing some old,
clumsy, and badly proportioned chapels that were there. Having thus made
a beginning, the Warden proposed to fill up those ornaments in the
interior with altar-pieces in oils, and on the outer side with a series
of scenes in fresco and decorations in stucco, by the hands of the best
and most excellent masters that he could find, without grudging any
expense that might be incurred. He had already set to work on the
sacristy, which he had placed in the great recess behind the high-altar,
and there the ornamentation of marble was already finished, and many
pictures had been painted by the Florentine painter Giovanni Antonio
Sogliani, the rest of which, together with the altar-pieces and the
chapels that were wanting, were finished many years afterwards by order
of M. Sebastiano della Seta, the Warden of the Duomo in those days.

At that time Perino returned from Genoa to Pisa, and, having seen that
beginning, at the instance of Battista del Cervelliera, a person well
conversant with art and a most ingenio