Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo MichelozziVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 02 (of 10): Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Lorenzo had a son called Bonaccorso, who finished with his own hand the
frieze and that ornament, which had been left incomplete, with very
great diligence; which ornament, I declare, is the rarest and most
marvellous work that there is to be seen in bronze. Bonaccorso, dying
young, did not afterwards make many works, as he would have done, seeing
that he had been left with the secret of making castings in such a way
as to make them come out delicate, and also with the knowledge and the
method of perforating the metal in that manner which is seen in the
works left by Lorenzo. The latter, besides the works by his own hand,
bequeathed to his heirs many antiquities both in marble and in bronze,
such as the bed of Polycletus, which was something very rare; a leg of
bronze as large as life; some heads, both male and female; together with
some vases, all procured by him from Greece at no small cost. He left,
likewise, some torsi of figures, and many other things; and all were
dispersed together with the property of Lorenzo, some being sold to
Messer Giovanni Gaddi, then Clerk of the Chamber to the Pope, and among
these was the said bed of Polycletus, with the rest of the finer things.
Bonaccorso had a son called Vittorio, who survived him. He applied
himself to sculpture, but with little profit, as it is shown by the
heads that he made at Naples for the Palace of the Duke of Gravina,
which are not very good, since he never applied himself to art with love
or with diligence, but rather to scattering the property and the other
things which had been left him by his father and his grandfather.
Finally, going to Ascoli as architect under Pope Paul III, he had his
throat cut one night by one of his servants, who came to rob him. And
thus the family of Lorenzo became extinct, but not so his fame, which
will live to all eternity.
But returning to the said Lorenzo: he applied himself, while he lived,
to many things, and delighted in painting and in working in glass, and
for S. Maria del Fiore he made the round windows that are round the
cupola, excepting one, which is by the hand of Donato--namely, the one
wherein Christ is crowning Our Lady. Lorenzo likewise made the three
that are over the principal door of the same S. Maria del Fiore, and all
those of the chapels and of the tribunes, and also the rose-window in
the facade of S. Croce. In Arezzo he made a window for the principal
chapel of the Pieve, containing the Coronation of Our Lady, with two
other figures, for Lazzaro di Feo di Baccio, a very rich merchant; but
since they were all of Venetian glass, loaded with colour, they make the
places where they were put rather dark than otherwise. Lorenzo was
chosen to assist Brunellesco, when the latter was commissioned to make
the Cupola of S. Maria del Fiore, but he was afterwards relieved of the
task, as it will be told in the Life of Filippo.
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