brought to some degree of forwardness, but was never completed, nor placed on the basement prepared for its reception.[1]
It is true that on the front of the pedestal he did finish a story in marble, wherein he represented the said Giovanni in mezzo-rilievo. He is in a seated position, and is surrounded by numerous figures of Captives who are brought before him, soldiers, that is to say, and women with dishevelled hair, as well as many nude figures; but the story is wholly destitute of invention, nor can it be said to produce a good effect in any part.[2] At the end of this relief is a figure bearing a living pig on his shoulders, which is said to have been made for Messer Baldassare da Pescia, whom Baccio meant thereby to turn into derision, holding Messer Baldassare to be his enemy, because the latter had given the commission for the statues of Leo and Clement to other sculptors, as we have related above; besides that he had so proceeded in Pome as to compel from Bandinelli the restitution of the surplus moneys which he had received beforehand for those statues and figures: which restitution Baccio did not make without great inconvenience to himself.
Meanwhile Baccio was thinking of nothing but how to convince Duke Cosimo of the great extent to which the memory of the ancients had been maintained and their glories perpetuated by the statues and buildings which they had caused to be erected, and was constantly saying that his
- ↑ It was erected in the Great Hall of the Palazzo Vecchio, where it still remains, and where there is another statue of the same Commander, also by Bandinelli, of which we have mention a little below.—Ed. Flor., 1832-8.
- ↑ Cicognara, Storia della Scultura Moderna, gives a plate of this relief, which he considers Vasari to have underrated, his censures being properly applicable to certain parts of the work only. Cicognara instances the figure of the woman dragged forcibly along by a soldier, and which, as he justly remarks, is most admirable for the force and truth of its expression. He concludes by declaring, that <e although the work as a whole is not without defects, it must nevertheless be enumerated among the good productions of that age, and if it were equal in all its parts, might even be considered perfect.” Another commentator of as much impartiality as Cicognara, if not of equal judgment, declares that the latter has formed a more correct estimate of Bandinelli’s work than either Vasari or Bottari; the first having said too little, and the last, who declares the work to approach the antique, too much.” The tomb in question was never erected in San Lorenzo, but the pedestal may be seen at the angle of the Piazza on which that church stands.
