hich he
executed divinely well in oils. He then made, with a vast number of
little figures, cartoons of all the months of the year, which were woven
into most beautiful tapestries in silk and gold, with such industry and
diligence that there is nothing better of that kind to be seen, by
Marco, the son of Maestro Giovanni Rosto the Fleming. After these works,
Il Bacchiacca decorated in fresco the grotto of a water-fountain that is
at the Pitti Palace. Lastly, he made the designs for a bed that was
executed in embroidery, all full of scenes and little figures. This is
the most ornate work in the form of a bed, in such a kind of
workmanship, that there is to be seen, the embroidering having been made
rich with pearls and other things of price by Antonio Bacchiacca, the
brother of Francesco, who is an excellent embroiderer; and, since
Francesco died before the completion of the bed, which has served for
the happy nuptials of the most illustrious Lord Prince of Florence, Don
Francesco de' Medici, and of her serene Highness Queen Joanna of
Austria, it was finished in the end after the directions and designs of
Giorgio Vasari.

Francesco died at Florence in the year 1557.

BENVENUTO GAROFALO AND GIROLAMO DA CARPI, AND OTHER LOMBARDS

[Illustration: MORETTO DA BRESCIA: S. JUSTINA

(_Vienna: Imperial Gallery, 218. Panel_)]

LIVES OF BENVENUTO GAROFALO AND GIROLAMO DA CARPI, PAINTERS OF FERRARA,
AND OF OTHER LOMBARDS

In this part of the Lives that we are about to write we shall give a
brief account of the best and most eminent painters, sculptors, and
architects who have lived in Lombardy in our time, after Mantegna,
Costa, Boccaccino of Cremona, and Francia of Bologna; for I am not able
to write the life of each in detail, and it seems to me enough to
enumerate their works. And even this I would not have set myself to do,
nor to give a judgment on those works, if I had not first seen them; but
since, from the year 1542 down to this present year of 1566, I had not
travelled, as I did before, over almost the whole of Italy, nor seen the
above-mentioned works and the others that had appeared in great numbers
during that period of four-and-twenty years, I resolved, before writing
of them, being almost at the end of this my labour, to see them and
judge of them with my own eyes. Wherefore, after the conclusion of the
above-mentioned nuptials of the most illustrious Lord Don Francesco de'
Medici, Prince of Floren