tonio having formed a strait friendship with
him and having recognized the ability of Perino, there was reawakened in
his mind the desire to attend to painting, abandoning all other
pleasures, and he resolved when the plague had ceased to go with Perino
to Rome. But this design was never fulfilled, for the plague having come
to Florence, at the very moment when Perino had finished the scene of
the Submersion of Pharaoh in the Red Sea, painted in the colour of
bronze in chiaroscuro for Ser Raffaello, during the execution of which
Lappoli was always present, they were forced both the one and the other
to fly from Florence, in order not to lose their lives there.

Thereupon Giovanni Antonio returned to Arezzo, and set himself, in order
to pass the time, to paint on canvas the scene of the death of Orpheus,
killed by the Bacchantes: he set himself, I say, to paint this scene in
chiaroscuro of the colour of bronze, after the manner in which he had
seen Perino paint the picture mentioned above, and when the work was
finished it brought him no little praise. He then set to work to finish
an altar-piece that his former master Domenico Pecori had begun for the
Nuns of S. Margherita: in which altar-piece, now to be seen in their
convent, he painted an Annunciation. And he made two cartoons for two
portraits from life from the waist upwards, both very beautiful; one was
Lorenzo d' Antonio di Giorgio, at that time a pupil and a very handsome
youth, and the other was Ser Piero Guazzesi, who was a convivial person.

The plague having finally somewhat abated, Cipriano d' Anghiari, a rich
man of Arezzo, who in those days had caused a chapel with ornaments and
columns of grey-stone to be built in the Abbey of S. Fiore at Arezzo,
allotted the altar-piece to Giovanni Antonio at the price of one hundred
crowns. Meanwhile, Rosso passed through Arezzo on his way to Rome, and
lodged with Giovanni Antonio, who was very much his friend; and, hearing
of the work that he had undertaken to do, he made at the request of
Lappoli a very beautiful little sketch full of nudes. Whereupon Giovanni
Antonio, setting his hand to the work and imitating the design of Rosso,
painted in that altar-piece the Visitation of S. Elizabeth, and in the
lunette above it a God the Father and some children, copying the
draperies and all the rest from life. And when he had brought it to
completion, he was much praised and commended for it, and above all for
some heads cop