In the next room there are many excellent portraits of this kind,
named and unnamed. Of more important works, we should notice the San
Giovannino by Antonio Rossellino, and a tondo by the same master
representing the Adoration of the Shepherds; Andrea Verrocchio's
Madonna and Child; Verrocchio's Lady with the Bouquet (181), with
those exquisite hands of which Gabriele D'Annunzio has almost wearied
the readers of his _Gioconda_; by Matteo Civitali of Lucca, Faith
gazing ecstatically upon the Sacrament. By Mino da Fiesole are a
Madonna and Child, and several portrait busts--of the elder Piero dei
Medici (234) and his brother Giovanni di Cosimo (236), and of Rinaldo
della Luna. We should also notice the statues of Christ and three
Apostles, of the school of Andrea Pisano; portrait of a girl by
Desiderio da Settignano; two bas-reliefs by Luca della Robbia,
representing the Liberation and Crucifixion of St. Peter, early works
executed for a chapel in the Duomo; two sixteenth century busts,
representing the younger Giuliano dei Medici and Giovanni delle Bande
Nere; and, also, a curious fourteenth century group (222) apparently
representing the coronation of an emperor by the Pope's legate.
In the centre of the room are St. John Baptist by Benedetto da Maiano;
Bacchus, by Jacopo Sansovino; and Michelangelo's second David (224),
frequently miscalled Apollo, made for Baccio Valori after the siege of
Florence, and pathetically different from the gigantic David of his
youth, which had been chiselled more than a quarter of a century
before, in all the passing glory of the Republican restoration.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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