not fit for so much labour. Whereupon the Pope,
recognizing that he deserved something both on account of his age and
for all his work, and hearing him much recommended, gave him an
allowance of twenty-five ducats a month, which lasted up to his death,
on the condition that he should have charge of the Palace and of the
house of the Farnese family.

By this time Michelagnolo Buonarroti had uncovered the wall with the
Last Judgment in the Papal Chapel, and there remained still unpainted
the base below, where there was to be fixed a screen of arras woven in
silk and gold, like the tapestries that adorn the Chapel. Wherefore, the
Pope having ordained that the weaving should be done in Flanders, it
was arranged with the consent of Michelagnolo that Perino should begin
to paint a canvas of the same size, which he did, executing in it women,
children and terminal figures, holding festoons, and all very lifelike,
with the most bizarre things of fancy; but this work, which was truly
worthy of him and of the divine picture that it was to adorn, remained
unfinished after his death in some apartments of the Belvedere.

After this, Antonio da San Gallo having finished the building of the
Great Hall of Kings in front of the Chapel of Sixtus IV in the Papal
Palace, Perino divided the ceiling into a large pattern of octagonal
compartments, crosses, and ovals, both sunk and in relief; which done,
Perino was also commissioned to adorn it with stucco-work, with the
richest and most beautiful ornaments that could be produced by all the
resources of that art. He thus began it, and in the octagons, in place
of rosettes, he made four little boys in full relief, who, with their
feet pointing to the centre and their arms forming a circle, make a most
beautiful rosette, and in the rest of the compartments are all the
devices of the house of Farnese, with the arms of the Pope in the centre
of the vaulting. And this work in stucco may be said with truth to have
surpassed in mastery of execution, in beauty, and in delicacy, all those
that have ever been done by ancients or moderns, and to be truly worthy
of the head of the Christian religion. After the designs of the same
man, likewise, the glass windows were executed by Pastorino da Siena, an
able master of that craft; and Perino caused the walls below to be
prepared with very beautiful ornaments in stucco, intending to paint
scenes there with his own hand, which were afterwards continued by the