was very loving, especially towards his
friends, there was no mark of love and affection that Giorgio did not
receive from him. The same Vasari, having left Mantua and gone to
Venice, returned to Rome at the very time when Michelagnolo had just
uncovered his Last Judgment in the Chapel; and he sent to Giulio by M.
Nino Nini of Cortona, the secretary of the aforesaid Cardinal of Mantua,
three sheets containing the Seven Mortal Sins, copied from that Last
Judgment of Michelagnolo, which were welcome in no ordinary manner to
Giulio, both as being what they were, and because he had at that time to
paint a chapel in the palace for the Cardinal, and they served to
inspire him to greater things than those that he had in mind. Putting
forward all possible effort, therefore, to make a most beautiful
cartoon, he drew in it with fine fancy the scene of Peter and Andrew
leaving their nets at the call of Christ, in order to follow Him, and to
be thenceforward, not fishers of fishes, but fishers of men. And this
cartoon, which proved to be the most beautiful that Giulio had ever
made, was afterwards carried into execution by the painter Fermo
Ghisoni, a pupil of Giulio, and now an excellent master.

Not long afterwards the superintendents of the building of S. Petronio
at Bologna, being desirous to make a beginning with the facade of that
church, succeeded after great difficulty in inducing Giulio to go there,
in company with a Milanese architect called Tofano Lombardino, a man in
great repute at that time in Lombardy for the many buildings by his hand
that were to be seen in that country. These masters, then, made many
designs, those of Baldassarre Peruzzi of Siena having been lost; and one
that Giulio made, among others, was so beautiful and so well ordered,
that he rightly received very great praise for it from that people, and
was rewarded with most liberal gifts on his return to Mantua.

Meanwhile, Antonio da San Gallo having died at Rome about that time, the
superintendents of the building of S. Pietro had been thereby left in no
little embarrassment, not knowing to whom to turn or on whom to lay the
charge of carrying that great fabric to completion after the plan
already begun; but they thought that no one could be more fitted for
this than Giulio Romano, for they all knew how great were his worth and
excellence. And so, surmising that he would accept such a charge more
than willingly in order to repatriate himself in an hon