and on the field of the vaulting he did the rest of
the work in pictures, counterfeiting them after the manner of cameos in
black and white, and so well, that nothing better could be imagined.
There remained four arches beneath the vaulting, each twelve braccia in
breadth and six in height, which were not painted at that time, but many
years afterwards by Giorgio Vasari, as a young man of eighteen years,
when he was in the service of Duke Alessandro de' Medici, his first
lord, in the year 1535; which Giorgio executed there stories from the
life of Julius Caesar, in allusion to the above-named Cardinal Giulio,
who had caused the work to be done. Giovanni then executed on a little
barrel-shaped vault, beside that chamber, some works in stucco in the
lowest of low-relief, and likewise some pictures, which are exquisite;
but, although these pleased the painters that were in Florence at that
time, being wrought with boldness and marvellous mastery, and filled
with spirited and fantastic inventions, yet, since they were accustomed
to a laboured manner of their own and to doing everything that they
carried into execution with copies taken from life, they did not praise
them without reserve, not being altogether decided in their minds, nor
did they set themselves to imitate them, perhaps because they had not
the courage.

Having then returned to Rome, Giovanni executed in the loggia of
Agostino Chigi, which Raffaello had painted and was still engaged in
carrying to completion, a border of large festoons right round the
groins and squares of the vaulting, making there all the kinds of
fruits, flowers, and leaves, season by season, and fashioning them with
such artistry, that everything may be seen there living and standing out
from the wall, and as natural as the reality; and so many are the
various kinds of fruits and plants that are to be seen in that work,
that, in order not to enumerate them one by one, I will say only this,
that there are there all those that Nature has ever produced in our
parts. Above the figure of a Mercury who is flying, he made, to
represent Priapus, a pumpkin entwined in bind-weed, which has for
testicles two egg-plants, and near the flower of the pumpkin he
depicted a cluster of large purple figs, within one of which, over-ripe
and bursting open, the point of the pumpkin with the flower is entering;
which conceit is rendered with such grace, that no one could imagine
anything better. But why say mor