for Rosso went away without finishing the
work, as has been related in his Life, and Lappoli was constrained to
restore the money; and if his friends had not helped him, and
particularly Giorgio Vasari, who valued at three hundred crowns the part
that Rosso had left finished, Giovanni Antonio would have been little
less than ruined in his effort to do honour and benefit to his native
city. These difficulties over, Lappoli painted an altar-piece in oils
containing the Madonna, S. Bartholomew, and S. Matthew at the commission
of Abbot Camaiani of Bibbiena, for a chapel in the lower church at S.
Maria del Sasso, a seat of the Preaching Friars in the Casentino; and he
acquitted himself very well, counterfeiting the manner of Rosso. And
this was the reason that a Confraternity at Bibbiena afterwards caused
him to paint on a banner for carrying in processions a nude Christ with
the Cross on His shoulder, who is shedding blood into the Chalice, and
on the other side an Annunciation, which was one of the best things that
he ever did.

In the year 1534, Duke Alessandro de' Medici being expected in Arezzo,
the Aretines, with Luigi Guicciardini, the commissary in that city,
wishing to honour the Duke, ordained that two comedies should be
performed. The charge of arranging one of those festivals was in the
hands of a Company of the most noble young men in the city, who called
themselves the Umidi; and the preparations and scenery for this comedy,
which had for its subject the Intronati of Siena, were made by Niccolo
Soggi, who was much extolled for them, and the comedy was performed very
well and with infinite satisfaction to all who saw it. The festive
preparations for the other were executed in competition by another
Company of young men, likewise noble, who called themselves the Company
of the Infiammati. And they, in order to be praised no less than the
Umidi, performed a comedy by M. Giovanni Pollastra, a poet of Arezzo,
under his management, and entrusted the making of the scenery to
Giovanni Antonio, who acquitted himself consummately well; and thus
their comedy was performed with great honour to that Company and to the
whole city. Nor must I pass over a lovely notion of that poet's, who was
certainly a man of beautiful ingenuity. While the preparations for these
and other festivals were in progress, on many occasions the young men of
the two Companies, out of rivalry and for various other reasons, had
come to blows, and sev