which day matins are chanted in the
evening, one of his disciples, a young Aretine, being in church, made a
blaze of sparks and flames with a lighted candle-end and some resin, at
the moment when the "darkness," as they call it, was in progress; and
the boy was reproved by some priests, and even struck. Seeing this,
Rosso, who had the boy seated at his side, sprang up full of anger
against the priests. Thereupon an uproar began, without anyone knowing
what it was all about, and swords were drawn against poor Rosso, who was
busy with the priests. Taking to flight, therefore, he contrived to
regain his own rooms without having been struck or overtaken by anyone.
But he held himself to have been affronted; and having finished the
panel for Castello, without troubling about his work at Arezzo or the
wrong that he was doing to Giovanni Antonio, his security (for he had
received more than a hundred and fifty crowns), he set off by night.
Taking the road by Pesaro, he made his way to Venice, where, being
entertained by Messer Pietro Aretino, he made for him a drawing, which
was afterwards engraved, of Mars sleeping with Venus, with the Loves and
Graces despoiling him and carrying off his cuirass. Departing from
Venice, he found his way into France, where he was received by the
Florentine colony with much affection. There he painted some pictures,
which were afterwards placed in the Gallery at Fontainebleau; and these
he then presented to King Francis, who took infinite pleasure in them,
but much more in the presence, speech, and manner of Rosso, who was
imposing in person, with red hair in accordance with his name, and
serious, deliberate, and most judicious in his every action. The King,
then, after straightway granting him an allowance of four hundred
crowns, and giving him a house in Paris, which he occupied but seldom,
because he lived most of the time at Fontainebleau, where he had rooms
and lived like a nobleman, appointed him superintendent over all the
buildings, pictures, and other ornaments of that place.

[Illustration: THE TRANSFIGURATION

(_After the panel by =Il Rosso=. Citta da Castello: Duomo_)

_Alinari_]

There, in the first place, Rosso made a beginning with a gallery over
the lower court, which he completed not with a vault, but with a
ceiling, or rather, soffit, of woodwork, partitioned most beautifully
into compartments. The side-walls he decorated all over with
stucco-work, fantastic and bizarre in i