The walls were painted in light oil-colours; the doors and window-frames shone in blues and greens, and even in reds.

Vasari also relates that Sebastiano del Piombo, acting on his own responsibility, prepared this wall with a ground for oil-colours, hoping to be employed by Michelangelo, but that the latter had it removed, preferring the orthodox method of fresco-painting.

But during my rapid approach, I observed that the external walls of the nameless edifice beneath the arcade were covered, and without a single interstitial interval, by small pictures in oil-colours, equal in size, and equal in demerit, and each and all representing some calamitous crisis of human existencea fire, a ship-wreck, a boat-wreck, a battle, a leprosy!