this no less in the hope of having
some occasion to study the works in Florence than with the intention
of fighting; but in this he failed, for his captain, Giovanni, had to
guard not a place within the city, but the bastions on the hill
without. That war finished, and the guard of Florence being commanded
not long afterwards by Signor Alessandro Vitelli of Citta di Castello,
Cristofano, drawn by his friends and by his desire to see the pictures
and sculptures of the city, enlisted as a soldier in that guard. And
while he was in that service, Signor Alessandro, having heard from
Battista della Bilia, a painter and soldier from Citta di Castello,
that Cristofano gave his attention to painting, and having obtained a
beautiful picture by his hand, determined to send him with that same
Battista della Bilia and with another Battista, likewise of Citta di
Castello, to decorate with sgraffiti and paintings a garden and loggia
that he had begun at Citta di Castello. But the one Battista having
died while that garden was being built up, and the other Battista
having taken his place, for the time being, whatever may have been the
reason, nothing more was done.

Meanwhile Giorgio Vasari had returned from Rome, and was passing his
time with Duke Alessandro in Florence, until his patron Cardinal
Ippolito should return from Hungary; and he had received rooms in the
Convent of the Servites, that he might make a beginning with the
execution of certain scenes in fresco from the life of Caesar in the
chamber at the corner of the Medici Palace, where Giovanni da Udine
had decorated the ceiling with stucco-work and pictures. Now
Cristofano, having made Giorgio's acquaintance at the Borgo in the
year 1528, when he went to see Rosso in that place, where he had
shown him much kindness, resolved that he would attach himself to
Vasari and thus find much more opportunity for giving attention to art
than he had done in the past. Giorgio, then, after a year's
intercourse with him as his companion, finding that he was likely to
make an able master, and that he was pleasant and gentle in manners
and a man after his own heart, conceived an extraordinary affection
for him. Wherefore, having to go not long afterwards, at the
commission of Duke Alessandro, to Citta di Castello, in company with
Antonio da San Gallo and Pier Francesco da Viterbo (who had been in
Florence to build the castle, or rather, citadel, and on their return
were taking the road b