painter Daniello Ricciarelli of Volterra, who, if death had not cut
short the noble aspirations that he had, would have proved how the
moderns have the courage not only to equal the ancients with their
works, but perhaps even to surpass them by a great measure.

While the stucco-work of this vaulting was in progress, and Perino was
considering the designs for his scenes, the old walls of the Church of
S. Pietro at Rome were being pulled down to make way for those of the
new building, and the masons came to a wall where there was a Madonna,
with other pictures, by the hand of Giotto; which being seen by Perino,
who was in the company of Messer Niccolo Acciaiuoli, a Florentine doctor
and much his friend, both of them were moved to pity for that picture
and would not allow it to be destroyed; nay, having caused the wall to
be cut away around it, they had it well braced with beams and bars of
iron and deposited below the organ of S. Pietro, in a place where there
was neither altar nor any other consecrated object. And before the wall
that had been round the Madonna was pulled down, Perino copied the
figure of Orso dell' Anguillara, the Roman Senator who had crowned M.
Francesco Petrarca on the Campidoglio, and who was at the feet of that
Madonna. Round the picture of the Madonna were to be made some ornaments
in stucco and painting, and together with them a memorial to a certain
Niccolo Acciaiuoli, who had formerly been a Roman Senator; and Perino,
having made the designs, straightway set his hand to the work, and,
assisted by his young men and by Marcello Mantovano, his disciple,
carried it out with great diligence.

In the same S. Pietro the Sacrament did not occupy, with regard to
masonry, a very honourable position; wherefore certain deputies were
appointed from the Company of the Sacrament, who ordained that a chapel
should be built in the centre of the old church by Antonio da San Gallo,
partly with remains in the form of ancient marble columns, and partly
with other ornaments of marble, bronze, and stucco, placing in the
centre a tabernacle by the hand of Donatello, by way of further
adornment; and Perino executed there a very beautiful ceiling with many
minute scenes full of figures from the Old Testament, symbolical of the
Sacrament. In the middle of it, also, he painted a somewhat larger
scene, containing the Last Supper of Christ with the Apostles, and below
it two Prophets, one on either side of the body of Ch