s a Nativity of Our Lord executed with much diligence, with many
portraits from life. Not to speak of many pictures of Our Lady and
various portraits that he has painted in Rome and in Florence, and
pictures executed in the Vatican, as has been related above.

There are also certain other young painters of the same Academy who have
been employed in the above-mentioned decorations, some of Florence and
some of the Florentine States. Alessandro del Barbiere, a young
Florentine of twenty-five, besides many other works, painted for the
said nuptials in the Palace, after the designs and directions of Vasari,
the canvases of the walls in the Great Hall, wherein were depicted the
squares of all the cities in the dominion of the Lord Duke; in which he
certainly acquitted himself very well, and proved himself a young man of
judgment and likely to achieve any success. In like manner, Vasari has
been assisted in these and other works by many other disciples and
friends; Domenico Benci, Alessandro Fortori of Arezzo, his cousin
Stefano Veltroni, and Orazio Porta, both of Monte Sansovino, and Tommaso
del Verrocchio.

In the same Academy there are also many excellent craftsmen who are
strangers, of whom we have spoken at length in various places above; and
therefore it shall suffice here to make known their names, to the end
that they may be numbered in this part among the other Academicians.
These, then, are Federigo Zucchero; Prospero Fontana and Lorenzo
Sabatini, of Bologna; Marco da Faenza, Tiziano Vecelli, Paolo Veronese,
Giuseppe Salviati, Tintoretto, Alessandro Vittoria, the sculptor Danese,
the painter Battista Farinato of Verona, and the architect Andrea
Palladio.

Now, to say something also of the sculptors in our Academy and of their
works, although I do not intend to speak of them at any length, because
they are alive and for the most part most illustrious in name and fame,
I say that Benvenuto Cellini, a citizen of Florence, who is now a
sculptor (to begin with the oldest and most honoured), had no peer in
his youth when he was a goldsmith, nor perhaps had he for many years any
equal in that profession and in making most beautiful figures in the
round and in low-relief, and all the other works of that craft. He set
jewels, and adorned them with marvellous collets and with little figures
so well wrought, and at times so bizarre and fantastic that it is not
possible to imagine anything finer or better. And the medals that