Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/246

238 in his own words, namely, that he both could and would do what he pleased in his own house; whereupon, not being able to obtain any other answer, he was compelled to come to reasonable terms, and to make the painter a less troublesome neighbour.

We find it further related, that Sandro Botticelli once went to the vicar of his parish, and, in jest, accused a friend of his own of heresy. The person inculpated having appeared, demanded to know by whom he was accused and of what. Being told that Sandro had declared him to hold the opinion of the Epicureans, to wit, that the soul dies with the body, he required that his accuser should be confronted with him before the judge. Sandro was summoned accordingly, when the accused man exclaimed, “It is true that I hold the opinion stated respecting the soul of this man, who is a blockhead; nay, does he not appear to you to be a heretic also; for, without a grain of learning, scarcely knowing how to read, has he not undertaken to make a commentary on Dante, and does he not take his name in vain?”

This master is said to have had an extraordinary love for those whom he knew to be zealous students in art, and is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money; but being a bad manager and very careless, all came to nothing. Finally, having become old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and decrepitude, in his seventyeighth year. He was buried at Florence, in the church of Ognissanti, in the year 1515.

In the Guardaroba of the Signor Duke Cosimo are two very beautiful female heads in profile by this master, one is said to be the portrait of an inamorata of Giuliano de’ Medici, brother of Lorenzo; the other that of Madonna Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo’s wife. In the same place, and also by the hand of Sandro, is a Bacchus, raising a wine-flask to his lips with both hands, a truly animated figure. In the cathedral of Pisa was an Assumption of the Virgin, with