A well-known humanist, his literary vocation was accompanied by legal studies, at his family’s wishes, at the Universities of Bologna, Padua and Siena. Due to his closeness to lively intellectual circles adopting free-thinking approaches to Christianity, he lived a difficult life and died in exile, having been condemned as a heretic in 1555 and forced to flee to France and Switzerland. He conceived the iconographic series in the Sala del Fuoco highlighting the Roman origins of the city.