rder to
execute certain pictures, and was painting a wall that faced towards the
garden. And after Perino had begun to draw the cartoon for the scene of
the Shipwreck that has been described above, while he was taking his
time about it, amusing himself and seeing Genoa, and labouring only at
intervals at the cartoon, although a great part was finished in various
ways and those nudes were drawn, some in chiaroscuro, some in charcoal,
and others in black chalk, some being drawn in imitation of
gradine-work, others shaded, and others again only outlined; while, I
say, Perino was going on in this way, without beginning to paint,
Girolamo da Treviso murmured against him, saying, "Cartoons, and nothing
but cartoons! I have my art at the tip of my brush." Decrying him very
often in this or some other similar manner, it came to the ears of
Perino, who, taking offence, straightway caused his cartoon to be fixed
to the vaulting where the scene was to be painted, and the boards of his
staging to be removed in many places, to the end that the work might be
seen from below; and then he threw open the hall. Which hearing, all
Genoa ran to see it, and, amazed by Perino's grand design, they praised
him to the skies. Thither, among others, went Girolamo da Treviso, who
saw what he had never thought to see from the hand of Perino; whereupon,
dumbfoundered by the beauty of the work, he departed from Genoa without
asking leave of Prince Doria, and returned to Bologna, where he lived.
Perino was thus left alone in the service of the Prince, and finished
that hall, painting it in oils on the surface of the walls; and it was
held to be, as indeed it is, a thing unrivalled in its beauty, with its
lovely work in stucco in the centre of the vaulting and all around, even
below the lunettes, as I have described. In the other hall, into which
one enters by the right-hand door in the loggia, he executed on the
vaulting works in stucco almost similar in design to those of the other,
and painted pictures in fresco of Jove slaying the Giants with his
thunderbolts, in which are many very beautiful nudes, larger than life.
In the Heaven, likewise, are all the Gods, who are making gestures of
great vivacity and truly appropriate to their natures, amid the terrible
uproar of the thunder; besides which, the stucco-work is executed with
supreme diligence, and the fresco-colouring could not be more beautiful,
seeing that Perino was very able--indeed, a perfect