s, since he learned from him a manner very different
from that which his father, who was a painter, and his master,
Perugino, taught him. Then, too, what proof of his singular excellence
could be wished for, more convincing and more valid, than the
eagerness with which the sovereigns of the world contended for him?
Beside four pontiffs, Julius, Leo, Clement, and Paul, the Grand Turk,
father of the present Sultan, sent certain Franciscans with letters
begging him to come and reside at his court. By orders on the bank of
the Gondi at Florence, he provided that whatever sums were asked for
should be disbursed to pay the expenses of his journey; and when he
should have reached Cossa, a town near Ragusa, one of the greatest
nobles of the realm was told off to conduct him in most honourable
fashion to Constantinople. Francis of Valois, King of France, tried to
get him by many devices, giving instructions that, whenever he chose
to travel, 3000 crowns should be told out to him in Rome. The Signory
of Venice sent Bruciolo to Rome with an invitation to their city,
offering a pension of 600 crowns if he would settle there. They
attached no conditions to this offer, only desiring that he should
honour the republic with his presence, and stipulating that whatever
he might do in their service should be paid as though he were not in
receipt of a fixed income. These are not ordinary occurrences, or such
as happen every day, but strange and out of common usage; nor are they
wont to befall any but men of singular and transcendent ability, as
was Homer, for whom many cities strove in rivalry, each desirous of
acquiring him and making him its own.

"The reigning Pope, Julius III., holds him in no less esteem than the
princes I have mentioned. This sovereign, distinguished for rare taste
and judgment, loves and promotes all arts and sciences, but is most
particularly devoted to painting, sculpture, and architecture, as may
be clearly seen in the buildings which his Holiness has erected in the
Vatican and the Belvedere, and is now raising at his Villa Giulia (a
monument worthy of a lofty and generous nature, as indeed his own is),
where he has gathered together so many ancient and modern statues,
such a variety of the finest pictures, precious columns, works in
stucco, wall-painting, and every kind of decoration, of the which I
must reserve a more extended account for some future occasion, since
it deserves a particular study, and has not y