Raphael
of Urbino painted in this city a second work of such art that it would
have been the first if the other had not existed. It is a hall and two
chambers and a loggia in fresco, in the palaces of the said St. Peter, a
magnificent thing of many elegant stories of a very decorous description.
And the story of Apollo playing his harp amongst the nine muses in the
Parnasus is singular. In the house(191) of Augustimguis (Chigi) Raphael
has painted very preciously a poetry, the story of Psyche, and very
gracefully he surrounded Galatea by mermen in the middle of the waves and
by cupids in the air. The picture in S. Pietro in Montorio of the
Transfiguration of our Lord,(192) in oils, is very good, and another in
Aracoeli, and in the Temple of Peace, in fresco.(193) The picture in S.
Pietro in Montorio by the hand of Bastiaeo Veneziano(194) is famous; he did
it in competition with Raphael. There are many facades of palaces in this
city, in white and black,(195) by Baltesar(196) di Siena, architect, and
by Marturino and by Polidoro, a man who in that manner of working
magnificently enriched Rome. Further, there are here many palaces of
Cardinals and other men painted in grotesque and in stucco and with many
other varieties of art, for the city is more painted than any other in the
whole world, apart from the private pictures that every one holds dearer
than life itself. But of the things outside the city, the Vigna, begun by
Pope Clement VII., at the foot of Monte Mario, is most worth seeing; it is
ornamented by the fine painting and sculpture of Raphael and Julius, where
the giant lies sleeping, whose feet the satyrs are measuring with
shepherds' crooks.
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