fully paid by having a scrap of paper from your
hand." Seeing him to be determined, Perino took about four braccia of
coarse canvas, and, after having it fixed to the wall between two doors
in the priest's little room, painted on it in a day and a night a scene
coloured in imitation of bronze. On this canvas, which was to serve as a
screen for the wall, he painted the story of Moses passing the Red Sea
and Pharaoh being submerged with his horses and his chariots; and Perino
painted therein figures in most beautiful attitudes, some swimming in
armour and some naked, others swimming while clasping the horses round
the neck, with their beards and hair all soaked, crying out in the fear
of death and struggling with all their power to escape. On the other
side of the sea are Moses, Aaron, and all the other Hebrews, male and
female, who are thanking God, and a number of vases that he
counterfeited, carried off by them from Egypt, varied and beautiful in
form and shape, and women with head-dresses of great variety. Which
finished, he left it as a mark of lovingness to Ser Raffaello, to whom
it was as dear as the Priorate of S. Lorenzo would have been. This
canvas was afterwards much extolled and held in estimation, and after
the death of Ser Raffaello it passed, together with his other
possessions, to his brother Domenico di Sandro, the cheesemonger.

Departing, then, from Florence, Perino abandoned the work of the
Martyrs, which caused him great regret; and certainly, if it had been in
any other place but the Camaldoli, he would have finished it; but,
considering that the officials of health had taken that very Convent of
Camaldoli for those infected with the plague, he thought it better to
save himself than to leave fame behind him in Florence, being satisfied
that he had proved how much he was worth in the design. The cartoon,
with his other things, remained in the possession of the goldsmith
Giovanni di Goro, his friend, who died in the plague; and after that it
fell into the hands of Piloto, who kept it spread out in his house for
many years, showing it readily as a very rare work to every person of
intelligence; but I do not know what became of it after the death of
Piloto.

Perino stayed for many months in various places, seeking to avoid the
plague, but for all this he never spent his time in vain, for he was
continually drawing and studying the secrets of art; and when the plague
had ceased, he returned to Rome and