left unfinished and have so remained; for although since his death there has some work been done, first in one part and then in another, yet they have never been attended to with that diligence and earnestness which they did at one time receive, when Tribolo was living that is to say, and at the time when the Duke was very anxious for the progress of the undertaking. But of a truth, he who does not press forward the works on which he is engaged, while those who cause them to be executed are willing to spend freely, and while they take a great interest therein, is himself the cause of their being neglected, and occasions those works to remain incomplete, which by forethought and zeal he might have brought to their ultimate perfection. Thus by the negligence of the master is the world deprived of an ornament which it might have enjoyed, while he also remains without the honour and memorial which he would have possessed in those productions. For it rarely happens as it did to this villa of Castello, that on the death of the first master a second is found willing to carry forward the work, in strict accordance with the designs and model of the original author, with that modesty which was shown by Giorgio Vasari, who, by commission from the Duke, has caused the great fishpond of Castello and other parts of the work to be completed entirely after the designs of Tribolo, and accordingly as his Excellency has been disposed to have them gradually put out of hand.
Tribolo lived to the age of sixty-five, and was interred by the Barefooted Brotherhood in their place of burial. He left a son called Raffaello, who, has not attached himself to the pursuits of art; and two daughters, one of whom is the wife of Davidde,[1] who was the assistant of Tribolo in all the buildings erected at Castello, and who, being a person of much judgment, is now employed on the aqueducts of Florence and Pisa (he possessing considerable knowledge of such matters), as well as for those in any other part of the Duke’s dominions for which it may please his Excellency to require his services.
- ↑ David Fortini, whose descendants settled in Florence, and obtained the rights of citizenship therein. —Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
