While Baccio was employed with these works, he occupied himself with drawing, as was his custom, and for Marco da Ravenna and Agostino Veneziano the engravers, he designed a story in a very large plate, which he caused them to engrave. The subject of this work is the Slaughter of the Innocents, cruelly put to death by Herod; and the plate being crowded with nude figures, male and female, with children living and dead, to say nothing of the varied attitudes exhibited by the women and soldiery, gave occasion for the display of Baccio’s power of design, and of his knowledge of anatomy, and the action of the muscles on all the limbs, procuring him very great fame on that account, throughout all Europe.[1] This artist likewise prepared a very beautiful model in wood, with the figures in wax, for the sepulchral monument of the king of England,[2] the work was nevertheless not executed by Bandinelli, but was given to Benedetto da Rovezzano, who cast it in metal.
- ↑ This work bears the following inscription, Baccius invenit. Florentiae, with the cypher, formed of the letters S. R. intertwined.
- ↑ Temp. Hen. VIII., who, as our readers will remember, was a very
zealous patron of painting and the arts, as then known, more particularly
in the earlier part of his reign. The terms used to describe the works found
so acceptable by the monarch do nevertheless not give evidence of any great
familiarity with the subject, on the part of his immediate attendants, or indeed of the sovereign himself, since we find pictures on panel designated in
this reign, “tables with pictures,”
while those on canvas were called,
“cloths stained with a picture.”
In the Inventory of the Augmentation
Office we have certain entries of:—
“Item. One table with the History of Filius Prodigus.
“Item. One table with the Picture of the Duchess of Milan, being her whole stature.
“Item. One table, like a book, with the pictures of the King’s Majesty and Queen Jane.
“Item. One other table, with the whole stature of my Lord Prince, his Grace, stained upon cloth, with a curtain.
“Item. One stained cloth, with Phoebus riding in his Cart, in the air, with the history of him respecting this last, an accomplished contemporary very confidently predicts evil consequences to the artist of the present day “who should venture to exalt his godship into such a vehicle.”
Models in clay were at- this same period called “pictures made of earth,” the Inventory above cited furnishing us with the following instance among others:—“Item. One picture of Moses, made of earth, and set in a box of wood.” See Taylor, Origin and Progress of the Fine Arts, &c.
figures must be given to the reader in his own words, et pour cause, “These two Giants have gone to perdition.”
