Drawings by Perino Del Vaga for the Palazzo Doria, Genoa

Abstract

DURING the five years and five months between the death of Leo X and the Sack of Rome, conditions grew increasingly difficult for artists. Commissions became scarce and patrons were not as lavish as they once had been. A series of disasters—the austere administration of Adrian VI, who did not approve of art, an outbreak of the plague, and finally, most devastatingly, the Sack itself—gradually forced even the best artists to abandon Rome for more secure positions in provincial courts. Among the last of the leading artists to leave the city was Perino del Vaga. Perino had been imprisoned during the Sack and had suffered severely. When, through the kindness of Niccolò Viniziano, Perino received an offer of employment from Prince Andrea Doria, he departed for Genoa where he remained for approximately ten years.¹