Having completed the buildings required to be delineated in the two pictures, while Vasari was engaged with the twenty stories from the Apocalypse for the frieze, Cristofano next painted all the utensils for the service of the table, which were demanded for that picture, wherein San Gregorio (whose head is a portrait of Pope Clement VII.) is seated at supper with those twelve poor men:[1] all which he depicted with the utmost accuracy and truth.[2]
The third picture was then commenced,[3] Stefano being meanwhile occupied with the gilding of the framework for the other two; and a sort of scaffolding being erected on two tressels, Vasari worked on one end thereof, painting the three Angels, who appeared to Abraham in the Valley of Mamre, while Cristofano was employed on the other end in the delineation of certain buildings, which made part of the picture. But Cristofano was perpetually contriving supplementary modes of raising himself to the various levels at which he desired to be, and would make steps of whatever came to hand; not only benches and such things, but even pails or pots turned upside down, were used by him for that purpose; and on all these things, piled up one on another, he would mount without consideration, after a thoughtless fashion of his own. On a certain occasion, however, desiring to draw back somewhat for the purpose of examining the effect of what he had done, one of his feet slipped, when the piled up mass turning over, he fell from a height of five braccia, and injured himself very severely: it even became necessary that he should be bled, and many cares besides were demanded, but for which he would without doubt have died. Nor was this all; so negligent was Cristofano of his own person, that he one night suffered the bandages to become unfastened from the arm wherein he had been bled, to the imminent peril of his life; nay, if Stefano, who slept with him, had
- ↑ This well-known legend is agreeably related in the frequently cited work of Mrs. Jameson, Sacred and Legendary Art. The reader who may desire to recall the particulars will find them in that work, vol. i. p. 305, et seq.
- ↑ This Supper of Gregory the Great is now in the Gallery of Bologna, and is considered one of the best of Vasari’s works.
- ↑ Giordani, Catalogo della Pinacoteca Bolognese, informs us that this third picture was sent to Milan,
