Caterina. He expressly desires that his funeral should be as simple as possible, and that his money may be devoted to the sick and needy. Six years later, on the 12th of January, 1537, this excellent artist and faithful follower of Savonarola breathed his last, and was buried in the church of S. Pietro Maggiore.
Like his master, Lorenzo was an admirable portrait-painter, and several good specimens of his skill in this branch of art are still in existence. The Berlin Gallery contains an interesting profile of a young girl in a white, square-cut bodice, with pale red sleeves and a coral necklace, which goes by the name of Verrocchio, but is really an early work by Lorenzo di Credi. The words "Noli me Tangere," are written below, and at the back of the panel, on a shield wreathed in laurel, we read the following lines from the sonnet long ascribed to Leonardo, and evidently a favourite in his circle, but which we now know to have been composed by the poet Matteo di Meglio:—
"Fù che Iddio voile, sarà che Iddio vorrà,
Timore d'infamia, e solo disio d'onore.
Piansi già quello ch'io volli, poi ch'io l'ebbi."[1]
The portrait of a painter, which is described in the Uffizi catalogue as that of Verrocchio, is more probably that of Perugino, his comrade in that master's workshop, while in a fine drawing of an old man, at Chatsworth, Morelli recognised the likeness of the sculptor Mino da Fiesole. Three or four striking heads in red chalk, by Lorenzo's
- ↑
"What God willed, has been, what He wills must be;
Let us fear infamy and only desire honour.
I wept over what I had once desired when it became mine."
