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| Giorgio Vasari Pope Paul III Farnese names Cardinals and distributes benefices 1546 fresco Palazzo della Cancellaria, Rome |
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| Giorgio Vasari Tribute of the Nations to Pope Paul III Farnese 1546 fresco Palazzo della Cancellaria, Rome |
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| Giorgio Vasari Pope Paul III Farnese directing the continuance of the building of St Peter's 1546 fresco Palazzo della Cancellaria, Rome |
"But what, in the last resort, gives the clearest idea of grace in the sense used by Vasari is its connexion with facility. Rapidity and ease of execution were not qualities pursued by the Quattrocento artists for their own sake or recommended by the theorists of that period. On the contrary, care and exactness in working seem to be their first object, and speed or slowness seems to be a matter of relative indifference to them. The Mannerists, however, prided themselves that they could establish records in covering wall-space. In his autobiography Vasari boasts that he executes his works 'not only with the greatest possible rapidity, but also with incredible facility and without effort,' and that this is no empty boast is proved by his performance in the Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome, where he frescoed the big hall in a hundred days. Michelangelo, on being told by Vasari that he had executed the frescoes in this short time is said to have replied: 'So I see.'
– from the chapter on Michelangelo in Anthony Blunt's Artistic Theory in Italy, 1450-1600 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940)