tle
time, he would be perchance now at such a height of excellence as would
astonish everyone; none the less, it is believed that he is bound for
all that to achieve the same end, although something later, for the
reason that he is all genius and art, to which is added this also, that
he is continually employed and exercised by his sovereign, and in the
most honourable works.

Of our Academy, also, is Giovanni della Strada, a Fleming, who has good
design, the finest fantasy, much invention, and a good manner of
colouring; and, having made much proficience during the ten years that
he has worked in the Palace in distemper, fresco, and oils, after the
designs and directions of Giorgio Vasari, he can bear comparison with
any of the many painters that the said Lord Duke has in his service. But
at the present day the principal task of this man is to make cartoons
for various arras-tapestries that the Duke and the Prince are having
executed, likewise under the direction of Vasari, of divers kinds in
accordance with the stories in painting that are on high in the rooms
and chambers painted by Vasari in the Palace, for the adornment of which
they are being made, to the end that the embellishment of tapestries
below may correspond to the pictures above. For the chambers of Saturn,
Ops, Ceres, Jove, and Hercules, he has made most lovely cartoons for
about thirty pieces of tapestry; and for the upper chambers where the
Princess has her habitation, which are four, dedicated to the virtues of
woman, with stories of Roman, Hebrew, Greek, and Tuscan women (namely,
the Sabines, Esther, Penelope, and Gualdrada), he has made, likewise,
very beautiful cartoons for tapestries. In like manner, he has done the
same for ten pieces of tapestry in a hall, in which is the Life of Man;
and also for the five lower rooms where the Prince dwells, dedicated to
David, Solomon, Cyrus, and others. And for twenty rooms in the Palace of
Poggio a Caiano, for which the tapestries are even now being woven, he
has made after the inventions of the Duke cartoons of the hunting of
every kind of animal, and the methods of fowling and fishing, with the
strangest and most beautiful inventions in the world; in which variety
of animals, birds, fishes, landscapes, and vestments, with huntsmen on
foot and on horseback, fowlers in various habits, and nude fishermen, he
has shown and still shows that he is a truly able man, and that he has
learned well the Italian manner