Giuliano was sent by the same pontiff to the shrine of our Lady of Loretto, where he repaired the foundations, and greatly enlarged the nave of the church, which had previously been very small, and was constructed on rustic pillars of the rudest workmanship. But he did not carry the structure above the point to which the plinth of the earlier building had been raised; having then summoned his nephew Benedetto to his assistance, the latter afterwards erected the cupola, as will be related in due time.[1] After these things, Giuliano being compelled to return to Naples, there to complete the works already commenced in that city, was employed by the king Alfonso to construct a gate near the castle, and for this there were to be executed more than eighty figures, which Benedetto had to prepare in Florence, but the whole being brought to a stand by the death of the king, that work remained incomplete. Some relics of the figures may still be seen at Florence in the Misericordia, and others were lying, within my own remembrance, near the mill, but I know not where they are now to be found. Before the death of the king, however, Giuliano himself had died in Naples, at the age of seventy, and was honoured with a very sumptuous funeral, the king having caused fifty men to be clothed in mourning, and accompany the artist to his grave. He afterwards ordered a marble monument to be erected to his memory. Polito[2] continued to pursue the plans marked out by
- ↑ Vasari makes no further mention of this circumstance in his life of Benedetto. A work by the three brothers Maiano—Giovanni, Giuliano, and Benedetto—unknown to Vasari, and rarely named by writers, is the Tabernacle of the Madonna, called dell’ Ulivo; it belongs to the nuns of San Vincenzo di Prato, and is near that city. The altar is of marble, and the Virgin who holds the infant in her arms is of unglazed terra-cotta. The reader will find this work fully described in a pamphlet by the Canon Baldanzi, published at Prato in the year 1838, and entitled La Madonna dell'Ulivo disegnata e descritta.
- ↑ Ippolito del Donzello.
the western end of the Colosseum was demolished in order to construct the Palace of St. Mark with the spoils. But the destruction of the building at this part occurred much earlier, if we are to believe the writers who treat of the amphitheatre. See, among others, Marangoni, Anfiteatro Flavio. Similar reports have obtained currency in respect to the Farnese palace, for the construction of which Paul III. is also accused of despoiling the Colosseum.
