d to the Abbot, praying him to have them better
served, since it was not right that they should be treated like
bricklayers' labourers. This the Abbot promised to do, saying in excuse
that it was due more to the ignorance of the monks who looked after
strangers than to malice. Domenico arrived, but everything continued
just the same; whereupon David, seeking out the Abbot once again,
declared with due apologies that he was not doing this for his own sake
but on account of the merits and talents of his brother. But the Abbot,
like the ignorant man that he was, made no other answer. That evening,
then, when they had sat down to supper, up came the stranger's steward
with a board covered with bowls and messes only fit for a hangman,
exactly the same as before. Thereupon David, flying into a rage, upset
the soup over the friar, and, seizing the loaf that was on the table,
fell upon him with it and belaboured him in such a manner that he was
carried away to his cell more dead than alive. The Abbot, who was
already in bed, got up and ran to the noise, believing that the
monastery was tumbling down; and finding the friar in a sorry plight, he
began to upbraid David. Enraged by this, David bade him be gone out of
his sight, saying that the talent of Domenico was worth more than all
the pigs of Abbots like him that had ever lived in that monastery.
Whereupon the Abbot, seeing himself in the wrong, did his utmost from
that time onwards to treat them like the important men that they were.

This work finished, Domenico returned to Florence, where he painted a
panel for Signor di Carpi, sending another to Rimini for Signor Carlo
Malatesta, who had it placed in his chapel in S. Domenico. The latter
panel was in distemper, with three very beautiful figures, and with
little scenes below; and behind were figures painted to look like
bronze, with very great design and art. Besides these, he painted two
panels for the Abbey of S. Giusto, a seat of the Order of Camaldoli,
without Volterra; these panels, which are wondrously beautiful, he
executed at the order of the Magnificent Lorenzo de' Medici, for the
reason that the abbey was then held "in commendam" by his son Cardinal
Giovanni de' Medici, who was afterwards Pope Leo. This abbey was
restored not many years ago by the Very Reverend Messer Giovan Batista
Bava of Volterra, who likewise held it "in commendam," to the said
Congregation of Camaldoli.

Being then summoned to Siena through