roof fell upon it and broke it to pieces;
while upon him there came a fever so violent, that he was like to die of
it, on which account he had himself carried from Castello to Borgo a San
Sepolcro. This malady being followed by a quartan fever, he then went on
to the Pieve a San Stefano for a change of air, and finally to Arezzo,
where he was entertained in the house of Benedetto Spadari, who so went
to work with the help of Giovanni Antonio Lappoli of Arezzo and the many
friends and relatives that they had, that Rosso was commissioned to
paint in fresco a vault previously allotted to the painter Niccolo
Soggi, in the Madonna delle Lagrime. And so eager were they that he
should leave such a memorial of himself in that city, that he was given
a payment of three hundred crowns of gold. Whereupon Rosso began his
cartoons in a room that they had allotted to him in a place called
Murello; and there he finished four of them. In one he depicted our
First Parents, bound to the Tree of the Fall, with Our Lady drawing from
their mouths the Sin in the form of the Apple, and beneath her feet the
Serpent; and in the air--wishing to signify that she was clothed with
the sun and moon--he made nude figures of Phoebus and Diana. In the
second is Moses bearing the Ark of the Covenant, represented by Our Lady
surrounded by five Virtues. In another is the Throne of Solomon, also
represented by the Madonna, to whom votive offerings are being brought,
to signify those who have recourse to her for benefits: together with
other bizarre fancies, which were conceived by the fruitful brain of M.
Giovanni Pollastra, the friend of Rosso and a Canon of Arezzo, in
compliment to whom Rosso made a most beautiful model of the whole work,
which is now in my house at Arezzo. He also drew for that work a study
of nude figures, which is a very choice thing; and it is a pity that it
was never finished, for, if he had put it into execution and painted it
in oils, instead of having to do it in fresco, it would indeed have been
a miracle. But he was ever averse to working in fresco, and therefore
went on delaying the execution of the cartoons, meaning to have the work
carried out by Raffaello dal Borgo and others, so that in the end it was
never done.

At that same time, being a courteous person, he made many designs for
pictures and buildings in Arezzo and its neighbourhood; among others,
one for the Rectors of the Fraternity, of the chapel which is at the
foo