Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/20

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Giuliano was sent by the same pontiff to the shrine of our Lady of Loretto, where he repaired the foundations, and greatly enlarged the nave of the church, which had previously been very small, and was constructed on rustic pillars of the rudest workmanship. But he did not carry the structure above the point to which the plinth of the earlier building had been raised; having then summoned his nephew Benedetto to his assistance, the latter afterwards erected the cupola, as will be related in due time. After these things, Giuliano being compelled to return to Naples, there to complete the works already commenced in that city, was employed by the king Alfonso to construct a gate near the castle, and for this there were to be executed more than eighty figures, which Benedetto had to prepare in Florence, but the whole being brought to a stand by the death of the king, that work remained incomplete. Some relics of the figures may still be seen at Florence in the Misericordia, and others were lying, within my own remembrance, near the mill, but I know not where they are now to be found. Before the death of the king, however, Giuliano himself had died in Naples, at the age of seventy, and was honoured with a very sumptuous funeral, the king having caused fifty men to be clothed in mourning, and accompany the artist to his grave. He afterwards ordered a marble monument to be erected to his memory. Polito continued to pursue the plans marked out by