ding in a coach to the same Pardon in
company with Messer Bindo Altoviti, who was much his friend. At first
Giovanni denied that it was he, but finally he was forced to reveal
himself and to confess that he had great need of Giorgio's assistance
with the Pope in the matter of the pension that he had from the Piombo,
which was being denied to him by one Fra Guglielmo, a Genoese sculptor,
who had received that office after the death of Fra Sebastiano. Giorgio
spoke of this matter to the Pope, which was the reason that the bond was
renewed, and afterwards it was proposed to exchange it for a canonicate
at Udine for Giovanni's son. But afterwards, being again defrauded by
that Fra Guglielmo, Giovanni went from Udine to Florence, after Pope
Pius had been elected, in the hope of being assisted and favoured by his
Excellency with that Pontiff, by means of Vasari. Having arrived in
Florence, then, he was presented by Giorgio to his most illustrious
Excellency, with whom he went to Siena, and then from there to Rome,
whither there also went the Lady Duchess Leonora; and in such wise was
he assisted by the kindness of the Duke, that he was not only granted
all that he desired, but also set to work by the Pope with a good salary
to give the final completion to the last Loggia, which is the one over
that which Pope Leo had formerly caused him to decorate. That finished,
the same Pope commissioned him to retouch all that first Loggia, which
was an error and a thing very ill considered, for the reason that
retouching it "a secco" caused it to lose all those masterly strokes
that had been drawn by Giovanni's brush in all the excellence of his
best days, and also the boldness and freshness that had made it in its
original condition so rare a work.

After finishing that work, Giovanni, being seventy years of age,
finished also the course of his life, in the year 1564, rendering up his
spirit to God in that most noble city which had enabled him for many
years to live with so much success and so great a name. Giovanni was
always, but much more in his last years, a God-fearing man and a good
Christian. In his youth he took pleasure in scarcely any other thing but
hunting and fowling; and his custom when he was young was to go hunting
on feast-days with his servant, at times roaming over the Campagna to a
distance of ten miles from Rome. He could shoot very well with the fusil
and the crossbow, and therefore rarely returned home without his