the services of Cristofano for the hall of the Chancery, which was painted for the Cardinal Farnese after cartoons by his (Vasari’s) hand, and the whole of which were completed in a hundred days;[1] but herein also he was prevented, Cristofano again falling sick; and no sooner had he begun to recover than he returned to San Justino, so that Giorgio finished the hall without his aid, but receiving assistance from Raffaello dal Colle, from the Bolognese, Gian Battista Bagnacavallo, and from the Spaniards, Boviale and Bizzerra, as well as from many others, his friends and scholars.
Leaving Rome and returning to Florence, Vasari was invited to Rimini, for the purpose of painting a chapel in fresco, with an altar piece also, in the church of the monks of Monte Oliveto, the commission for which he received from the abbot, Gian Matteo Faettani. On his way Giorgio passed through San Justino, intending to take Cristofano away with him, but the abbot Bufolini, for whom Doceno was then painting a hall, would not suffer him to depart at that time, although he promised Vasari to despatch Cristofano soon after, and to take on himself the care of his journey even into Romagna. But notwithstanding all these promises, Bufolini delayed so long to send him, that when Cristofano arrived he found all the works for the abbot of Monte Oliveto completed, nay, Giorgio had furthermore painted a picture for the high altar of San Francesco d’Arimini, and this he did by commission from Messer Niccolò Marcheselli. He had also executed a picture at Ravenna, in the church of Classi, which belongs to the monks of Camaldoli namely, receiving his commission for that last from the father Don Romualdo da Verona, the abbot of that abbey.
Now about this time, in the year 1550 that is to say, Giorgio Vasari had painted the Marriage of Queen Esther, in the refectory of the Abbey of Santa Fiore, which belongs to the Black Friars, and in Florence he had delineated the
- ↑ “Vasari has done well/’ remarks a compatriot of his own, “to tell us the time employed on this work (the subject of which is the Life of Pope Paul III.), but unless he was compelled to the haste here indicated, that haste forms no excuse for the mediocrity of the performance, since it avails little to us that the work was done quickly, unless it had also been done well.”
