Vespasiano da Bisticci describes Cosimo’s attachment to this man. ‘He was,’ says he,[135] ‘a great friend of Donatello, and of all painters and sculptors. Finding there was little work for the latter, and not liking Donatello to remain inactive, he entrusted to him the pulpits and the doors of the sacristy at San Lorenzo; giving orders that whatever he needed for his own requirements and those of his four assistants should be paid to him weekly from the Medici bank.’ As Donatello did not dress to Cosimo’s liking, the latter presented him with a cloak and hood, an upper garment to wear under the cloak, and a whole suit, sending all this to him on the morning of a feast day. Donatello put the new things on a few times only, declining to wear them any longer, lest ‘people should think he had grown effeminate.’ How thoroughly Donatello was regarded as belonging to the Medici household is shown by the fact that the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga once asked Cosimo to send the artist to Mantua to execute a shrine modelled in 1450, to be set up during the expected visit of Pope Pius II.[136] Many other artists were on confidential terms with Cosimo and his family. Michelozzo’s two sons belonged almost to the family circle. In the last years of Cosimo, Donatello could no longer work, so his generous patron maintained him, and recommended him to his son Piero. The latter gave him a farm, as he said, ‘to provide him with bread and wine.’ The artist, however, gave back the gift in legal form, not wishing to embitter his life with household cares; whereupon Piero had the value of the produce assigned to him at the bank. In 1462 Piero granted him space for a vault in San Lorenzo, near the sacristy; and here, where so many of his works are to be seen, he was buried in 1468, not far from those who had so valued him during life.[137]