hall not proceed to repeat the same
things. But I must relate that after having drawn in my first years all
the good pictures that are about the churches of Arezzo, the first
rudiments were taught to me with some method by the Frenchman Guglielmo
da Marcilla, whose life and works we have described above. Then, having
been taken to Florence in the year 1524 by Silvio Passerini, Cardinal of
Cortona, I gave some little attention to design under Michelagnolo,
Andrea del Sarto, and others. But the Medici having been driven from
Florence in the year 1527, and in particular Alessandro and Ippolito,
with whom, young as I was, I had a strait attachment of service through
the said Cardinal, my paternal uncle Don Antonio made me return to
Arezzo, where a short time before my father had died of plague; which
Don Antonio, keeping me at a distance from the city lest I might be
infected by the plague, was the reason that I, to avoid idleness, went
about exercising my hand throughout the district of Arezzo, near our
parts, painting some things in fresco for the peasants of the
countryside, although as yet I had scarcely ever touched colours; in
doing which I learned that to try your hand and work by yourself is
helpful and instructive, and enables you to gain excellent practice. In
the year afterwards, 1528, the plague being finished, the first work
that I executed was a little altar-picture for the Church of S. Piero,
of the Servite Friars, at Arezzo; and in that picture, which is placed
against a pilaster, are three half-length figures, S. Agatha, S. Rocco,
and S. Sebastian. Being seen by Rosso, a very famous painter, who came
in those days to Arezzo, it came about that he, recognizing in it
something of the good taken from Nature, desired to know me, and
afterwards assisted me with designs and counsel. Nor was it long before
by his means M. Lorenzo Gamurrini gave me an altar-picture to execute,
for which Rosso made me the design; and I then painted it with all the
study, labour, and diligence that were possible to me, in order to learn
and to acquire something of a name. And if my powers had equalled my
good will, I would have soon become a passing good painter, so much I
studied and laboured at the things of art; but I found the difficulties
much greater than I had judged at the beginning.

However, not losing heart, I returned to Florence, where, perceiving
that I could not save only after a long time become such as to be able
to