Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il SodomaVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 07 (of 10): Tribolo to Il Sodoma
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Next, the above-named Messer Ottaviano de' Medici having besought
Giuliano privately that he should take for him the portrait of
Michelagnolo Buonarroti, he set his hand to it; and, after he had kept
Michelagnolo, who used to take pleasure in his conversation, sitting
for two hours, Giuliano said to him: "Michelagnolo, if you wish to see
yourself, get up and look, for I have now fixed the expression of the
face." Michelagnolo, having risen and looked at the portrait, said to
Giuliano, laughing: "What the devil have you been doing? You have
painted me with one of my eyes up in the temple. Give a little thought
to what you are doing." Hearing this, Giuliano, after standing pensive
for a while and looking many times from the portrait to the living
model, answered in serious earnest: "To me it does not seem so, but
sit you down again, and I shall see a little better from the life
whether it be true." Buonarroti, who knew whence the defect arose and
how small was the judgment of Bugiardini, straightway resumed his
seat, grinning. And Giuliano looked many times now at Michelagnolo and
now at the picture, and then finally, rising to his feet, declared:
"To me it seems that the thing is just as I have drawn it, and that
the life is in no way different." "Well, then," answered Buonarroti,
"it is a natural deformity. Go on, and spare neither brush nor art."
And so Giuliano finished the picture and gave it to Messer
Ottaviano, together with the portrait of Pope Clement by the hand of
Fra Sebastiano, as Buonarroti desired, who had sent to Rome for it.
Giuliano afterwards made for Cardinal Innocenzio Cibo a copy of the
picture in which Raffaello da Urbino had formerly painted portraits of
Pope Leo, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, and Cardinal de' Rossi; but in
place of Cardinal de' Rossi he painted the head of Cardinal Cibo, in
which he acquitted himself very well, and he executed the whole
picture with great diligence and labour. At that time, likewise, he
took the portrait of Cencio Guasconi, who was then a very beautiful
youth. And after this he painted at the villa of Baccio Valori, at
Olmo a Castello, a tabernacle in fresco, which, although it had not
much design, was well and very carefully executed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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