Giuliano Bugiardini moved to the studio of Fra Bartolomeo. He completed certain works left unfinished by Fra Bartolomeo when he died. Some years later in Rome, while at work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo sought Giuliano Bugiardini's services but later rejected them. Vasari mentioned Bugiardini assisted Michelangelo very briefly in 1508 with the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. He painted a "Martyrdom of St Catherine" for Santa Maria Novella in Florence, based on Michelangelo's sketches. He also painted in Bologna in 1526–1530. His earliest known works of between 1495 and 1500 show the influence of his
Sistine Chapel ceiling to a strongly projecting painted cornice that runs right around the ceiling, separating the pictorial areas of the biblical scenes from the figures of Prophets, Sibyls, and Ancestors, who literally and figuratively support the narratives. Ten broad painted crossribs of travertine cross the ceiling and divide it into alternately wide and narrow pictorial spaces, a grid that gives all the figures their defined place. A great number of small figures are integrated with the painted architecture, their purpose apparently purely decorative. These include two faux marble "putti" below the cornice on each rib, each one a male and female pair;