Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the FlemingsVasari, Giorgio
History
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 09 (of 10): Michelagnolo to the Flemings
Vasari, Giorgio
Art, Italian; Artists -- Italy -- Biography
Many works, likewise, have been executed in Rome by one Leonardo, a
Milanese, who has made recently two statues of marble, S. Peter and S.
Paul, for the Chapel of Cardinal Giovanni Riccio da Montepulciano,
which are much extolled and held to be good and beautiful figures. And
the sculptors Jacopo and Tommaso Casignuola have made in the Chapel of
the Caraffi, in the Church of the Minerva, the tomb of Pope Paul IV,
and, besides other ornaments, a statue formed of pieces which
represents that Pope, with a mantle of veined brocatello marble, and
the trimming and other things of veined marbles of various colours,
which render it marvellous. And so we see added to the other
industries of our modern intellects this new one, and that sculptors
proceed with colours in their sculpture to imitate painting. Which
tomb has been executed by means of the great saintliness, goodness and
gratitude of Pope Pius V, a Pontiff and Holy Father truly most
saintly, most blessed, and most worthy of long life.
Of Nanni di Baccio Bigio, a Florentine sculptor, besides what has been
said of him in other places, I have to record that in his youth, under
Raffaello da Montelupo, he applied himself in such a manner to
sculpture, that in some little things that he did in marble he gave
great promise that he would prove to be an able man. And having gone
to Rome, under the sculptor Lorenzetto, while he gave his attention as
his father had done also to architecture, he executed the statue of
Pope Clement VII, which is in the choir of the Minerva, and a Pietà of
marble, copied from that of Michelagnolo, which was placed in S. Maria
de Anima, the Church of the Germans, as a work that is truly very
beautiful. Another like it he made not long afterwards for Luigi del
Riccio, a Florentine merchant, which is now in S. Spirito at Florence,
in a chapel of that Luigi, who is no less extolled for such piety
towards his native city than is Nanni for having executed the statue
with much diligence and love. Nanni then applied himself under Antonio
da San Gallo with more study to architecture, and gave his attention,
while Antonio was alive, to the fabric of S. Pietro; where, falling
from a staging sixty braccia high, and shattering himself, he escaped
with his life by a miracle. Nanni has erected many edifices in Rome
and in the country round, and has sought to obtain even more, and
greater, as has been told in the Life of Michelagnolo. His work, also,
is the Palace of Cardinal Montepulciano on the Strada Giulia, and a
gate at Monte Sansovino built by order of Julius III, with a reservoir
for water that is not finished, and a loggia and other apartments of
the palace formerly built by the old Cardinal di Monte. And a work of
Nanni, likewise, is the house of the Mattei, with many other buildings
that have been erected or are still being constructed in Rome.
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