THE first man to whom Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici gave a commission for a great piece of sculpture, after they became independent, was Andrea del Verrocchio. He was a disciple of Donatello, and had worked with the master in San Lorenzo. This was of itself a recommendation to the Medici, who found him also employed by their relatives, the Tornabuoni. Vasari rightly observes that a certain severity is even more prominent in his works than in those of his master, because he lacked the creative versatility of the latter and tried to supply by study what Nature had denied him. In bronze-casting he displays a delicacy which recalls the goldsmith. The monument to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici was finished in 1472. Like Donatello, Verrocchio restored damaged antique sculptures for the Medici house and garden, and executed for Lorenzo some bronze busts which were sent to Matthias Corvinus. For the palace of the Signoria he furnished a bronze statue of David, now in the Podestà Museum, not very remarkable either in conception or execution. His shortcomings, however, are amply atoned for by the charming bronze group over the fountain in the courtyard, representing a boy, half-fighting, half-playing with a dolphin, full of easy grace that seems almost above this artist. It was a commission from Lorenzo, and intended for the fountain in the court at Careggi, but placed in its present position by Duke Cosimo. Verrocchio’s capabilities in more serious work were shown in Florence by the group of our Lord and the apostle St. Thomas, which in 1483 received the most prominent place in front of the church of Or San Michele—and in Venice, by his equestrian statue of Colleone. Though the former, with its broken and angular drapery—recalling the Umbrian school—does not exactly conform to the rules of plastic art, it is penetrated with a depth of feeling that renders it highly attractive; and in the latter the defiant self-conscious bearing of the old _condottiere_ brings his position and character vividly before the eye. Among Andrea’s marble works is a relievo, very naturalistic, representing the death (in her confinement, September 24, 1477) of Francesca Pitti, wife of Giovanni Tornabuoni; it was intended for her tomb, and is now to be seen in the palace of the Podestà.[191]