sliort time, and to his great credit; these figures subsequently formed the ornament of that portal of San Petronio, which leads towards the hospital called Della Morte.[1] Having finished these works, Tribolo was about to receive commissions for others of greater importance, and was highly esteemed by Messer Bartolommeo, who treated him with the most cordial kindness, when the pestilence of 1525 broke out in Bologna, as it did in all Lombardy, and Tribolo, to escape the dangers thereof, returned to Florence. There he remained during all the time that this contagious and pestilential sickness continued in Bologna, but when it had ceased, he once more departed from his native city, and returned to the former place, whither he had again been invited to repair.
He had no sooner arrived there, than Messer Bartolommeo, having lost many of his friends and relations, for whom and for himself he resolved to erect a sepulchral monument, refused to permit Tribolo to employ his time on the works of the façade of San Petronio, and caused him at once to prepare the model for the monument above-mentioned. This model Messer Bartolommeo wished to see complete before permitting the requisite preparations to be made; but when it was finished, Tribolo himself proceeded to Carrara for the purpose of causing the proper marbles to be excavated; and this he did, to the end that he might sketch and carve them out of the block on the place, by which means he not only diminished the weight to be removed, and rendered the carriage by so much the more easy, but was likewise enabled to increase the size of his figures.
While thus remaining at Carrara, Tribolo was anxious to avoid the loss of time, and therefore commenced two large figures of Children in marble; these, unfinished as they were, having been taken to Bologna on beasts of burden, together with the remainder of the work, were placed with the other marbles in one of the chapels of San Petronio, the death of Messer Bartolommeo Barbazzi having taken place
- ↑ Cicognara, Storia della Scultura Moderna, tomo ii., bestows high praise on these figures, and in Plates ii. and lxvi. he gives engravings of them and of two rilievi executed by Tribolo for the same place. See also Le Sculture delle porte di San Petronio, by Guizzardi, published in Bologna, with illustrative remarks by the Marchese Virgilio Davia.
