fortunes had happened.[1] Be this as it may, and whether it were by the malignity of some of those employed, or the envy of others, or that he is indeed to blame as was affirmed; certain it is that the weight of all this evil was laid on the shoulder of Tribolo. Now that master was not a man of any great courage; on the contrary, his disposition was rather an anxious one than the reverse; fearing therefore that the malice of some enemy might cause him to lose the favour of the Duke, he was in a state of great depression, when he was seized with an exceedingly violent fever. By this malady, Tribolo, 'who was always of very delicate constitution, was attacked on the 20th day of August in the year 1550, at which time Giorgio Vasari was in Florence, for the purpose of seeing the marbles required for the sepulchral monuments, which Pope Julius III. was having erected at San Pietro in Montorio, transmitted to Rome. He therefore, as one who truly valued and admired the abilities of Tribolo, went to visit and comfort him, entreating that he would think of nothing at that moment but the recovery of his health, and advising that when he was cured he would return to the works at Castello and complete them, leaving the rivers to run their own course, seeing that they were far more likely to drown his fame than bring him either honour or profit. This he promised to do; and I believe that he would have kept his word to the fullest extent, if he had not been prevented by death, which closed his eyes on the 7th day of September in the same year.[2]
Thus the works of Castello, commenced by this master and brought by him to a state of considerable forwardness, were
- ↑ Bottari has remarked, and with justice, that the fault of Tribolo was in his believing himself to be acquainted with a science of which he did not even know the first principles, which were indeed wholly unknown until Castelli laid them down a hundred years afterwards, in his Treatise concerning the Acque Correnti.
- ↑ Gaye, Carteggio inedito d’Artisti, vol. ii. p. 380, gives the following notice, from the Memorie fiorentine inedite, in a note to a letter from Duke Cosimo to the Proveditore of Fortresses, Ser Jacopo, in which letter the Duke mentions the death of Tribolo:—“26th August, 1550, died II Tribolo, who, about the year 1529, made measurements by night of the whole city of Florence, and executed a model in wood thereof, which was kept by Pope Clement VII. in his possession to the end of his days. Tribolo was occupied, when he died, with the arrangement of the garden and heights of Boboli.”
