After having consumed much time in this service, without any profit or advantage, Cristofano finally took refuge, almost in despair, with other exiles, in the village of S. Giustino in the States of the Church, a mile and a half distant from the Borgo and very near the Florentine frontier. In that place, although he stayed there at his peril, he painted for Abbot Bufolini of Città di Castello, who has most beautiful and commodious apartments there, a chamber in a tower, with a pattern of little boys and figures very well foreshortened to be seen from below, and with grotesques, festoons, and masks, the most lovely and the most bizarre that could be imagined. This chamber, when finished, so pleased the Abbot that he caused him to do another, in which, desiring to make some ornaments of stucco, and not having marble to grind into powder for mixing it, for this purpose he found a very good substitute in some stones from a river-bed, veined with white, the powder from which took a good and very firm hold. And within these ornaments of stucco Cristofano then painted some scenes from Roman history, executing them so well in fresco that it was a marvel.
At that time Giorgio Vasari was painting in fresco the upper part of the tramezzo[4] of the Abbey of Camaldoli, and two panel-pictures for the lower part; and, wishing to make about these last an ornament in fresco full of scenes, he would have liked to have Cristofano with him, no less to restore him to the favour of the Duke than to make use of him. But, although Messer Ottaviano de' Medici pleaded strongly with the Duke, it proved impossible to bend him, so ugly was the information that had been given to him about the behaviour of Cristofano. Not having succeeded in this, therefore, Vasari, as one who loved Cristofano, set himself to contrive to remove him at least from S. Giustino, where he, with other exiles, was living in the greatest peril. In the year 1539, then, having to execute for the Monks of Monte Oliveto, for the head of a great refectory in the Monastery of S. Michele in Bosco without Bologna, three panel-pictures in oils with three scenes each four braccia in length, and a frieze in fresco three braccia high all round with twenty stories of the Apocalypse in little figures, and all the monasteries of that Order copied from the reality, with partitions of grotesques, and round each window fourteen braccia of festoons with fruits copied from nature, Giorgio wrote straightway to Cristofano that he should go from S. Giustino to Bologna, together with Battista Cungi of the Borgo, his compatriot, who had also served Vasari for seven years. These men, therefore, having gone to Bologna, where Giorgio had not yet arrived--for he was still at Camaldoli, where, having finished the tramezzo, he was drawing the cartoon for a Deposition from the Cross, which was afterwards executed by him and set up on the high-altar in that same place--set themselves to prime the said three panels with gesso and to lay on the ground, until such time as Giorgio should arrive.