[51] "Opera Terribilissima--impresa chi arebbe giustamente fatto paura a una legione di pittori." On the whole, Vasari seems to lay more stress on the quantity than the quality of Benozzo's works. [52] 1478. [53] 1478, when by the conspiracy of the Pazzi and their adherents, Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated in S. Maria del Fiore, and his brother Lorenzo wounded, it was resolved by the Signoria that paintings of the conspirators, hung by their feet, should be exposed in front of the Governor's palace; and the commission being given to Andrea, he executed it with such felicity of resemblance, such variety of hanging attitudes, and so much to the contentment of connoisseurs, that from that instant he lost the name of Andrea dal Castagno in that of "Andrea degli Impiccati," or of the hanged.--_Vasari._ Of this exhibition the loss may be regretted, as it would have showed us Andrea in his element. [54] 1439-40--1521. [55] There is to the old edition in folio, of Dante, by Niccolo della Magna, a print of the Inferno annexed, which bears the name of Sandro Botticelli; Vasari in his Life says, that he commented a part of Dante and figured his Inferno and published it. [56] He was the nephew of Lazzaro Vasari, a helper of Pietro della Francesca, and great uncle of Giorgio the biographer; who in the Life of Luca, with not less fondness than vanity, relates the admonition and encouragement he gave to his father and himself, in a visit which he paid in his old age to their family at Arezzo.--Vita di L. Signorelli, t. iii. p. 9. [57] His father, who was a goldsmith, invented and first manufactured the garlands which were at that time the fashionable head-dress of the Florentine girls.--Vasari, Vita di D. Ghirlandajo, vol. ii. p. 410. [58] Among the uncertainties of dates, those relative to the birth of illegitimate children, for obvious reasons the most frequent, are the most perplexing. The birth of Lionardo has been fixed at various dates, viz. 1443; Lett. Pittor. t. ii. p. 192; 1445, according to the computation of Vasari; 1455, by Dargenville; 1467, by Padre Resta; with more probability 1444, by D.V. Pagave of Milano, followed by Fiorillo; but with most at 1452, by Durazzini, adopted by Lanzi. It seems improbable that Verocchio, the friend of Ser Piero, should have been only twelve years older than his pupil. Lionardo died in 1519. [59] In the figure of the Angel, conceived and executed by him, in the Baptism of the Saviour, at St. Salvi, which excelled the work of Verocchio so much, that indignant to be outdone by a boy, he dropped the pencil, and for ever abandoned painting. The statues of St. Thomas, in Orsanmichele at Florence, and of the Horse of Collevere at Venice, prove that Verocchio's real talent was sculpture: but the models of the three statues cast in bronze, by Rustici, for S. Giov. at Florence, and that of the great horse at Milano, place the pupil at least upon a level with the master in that branch of art.