Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/266

258 left constantly open, that he might go to drink whenever he pleased, without asking leave from any one. It is also said, that having once returned from the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, perfectly cured of some illness, I know not what, his reply to his friends when they came to visit and congratulate him was, “I am very ill.” “Ill! ” they replied, “nay, you are perfectly cured.” “And that is precisely wherefore I am ill,” rejoined Nanni, “for I am in want of a little fever, that I might remain in the hospital, well attended and at my ease.” When this artist was at the point of death, which happened in the hospital aforesaid, they placed a wooden crucifix before him, which was clumsy and ill executed, when he implored them to take it out of his sight and bring him one by Donato, declaring, that if they did not take that one from before him, he should die despairing, so greatly did the sight of ill-executed works in his own art displease him.

Among the disciples of Andrea Yerrocchio were Piero Perugino and Leonardo da Yinci, of whom we shall speak in the proper place, as was also the Florentine Francesco di Simone, by whom there is a marble tomb, with numerous small figures, in the church of San Domenico, in Bologna; the manner of this work is so exactly similar to that of Andrea, that it might be taken for his: the monument was erected for the doctor Messer Alessandro Tartaglia of Imola. Francesco likewise erected another for Messer Pietro Minerbetti, in the church of San Pancrazio, in Florence; it stands between one of the chapels and the sacristy. Another disciple of Andrea Yerrocchio was Agnolo di Polo, who worked in terra-cotta with great skill. The city is full of figures by his hand, and if he had devoted himself zealously to the study of his art he would have produced admirable works. But more than all his other disciples was Lorenzo