suffering any change. With the same mixture, Sebastiano worked on peperigno marbles of different kinds, vari-coloured stones, porphyries, and other very hard surfaces, paintings which may without doubt be expected to endure for a vast period of time. He has besides hereby taught us how we may paint on silver, copper, brass, and other metals.
This man had so much pleasure in gossipping and gabbling that he would waste whole days therein, or if at length he proceeded to his work, it was easy to perceive that he was subjecting himself to infinite suffering, and this may perhaps have been one cause of an opinion which he held, which was that his works could not be adequately paid for, whatever the price he received for them. For the Cardinal of Aragona Sebastiano painted a picture, wherein he depicted an exceedingly beautiful figure of Sant’ Agatha, naked, and subjected to the frightful tortures of her martyrdom.[1] This picture, which is indeed a most admirable work, is now in the Guadaroba of the Signor Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino,[2] and is in no respect inferior to the many other beautiful paintings by the hand of Raffaello da Urbino, of Titian, and of other masters, which are in the same place. Sebastiano likewise executed a portrait from life of the Signor Piero Gonzaga; this was painted in oil on stone, and was a most beautiful and admirable likeness, but the artist laboured over it for three entire years before he finished it.
Now in the time of Pope Clement, and when Michelagnolo was in Florence, employed about the new Sacristy of San Lorenzo, Giuliano Bugiardini was commissioned to execute a painting for Baccio Valori, the work to represent the likeness of the Pope, with that of Baccio himself, while in another; he was to depict his Holiness, with the Archbishop of Capua, this last picture being to be painted for Messer Ottaviano de’ Medici. Michelagnolo therefore had recourse to Fra Sebastiano, whom he requested to send him from Borne the head of the Pontiff painted in oil; this Sebastiano executed, and sent him accordingly, having succeeded in his
