Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/268

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From this commencement, artists proceeded to execute more perfectly-finished figures for those who required them for the performance of vows, not in Florence only, but in all places wherein men congregate for devotion, and where they offer votive pictures, or, as some call them, miracoU, when they have received any particular favour or benefit. E'er whereas these miracoli were previously made in silver, very small, or, if larger, in coarse pictures only, or made most clumsily in wax, they began in the time of Andrea to make them in a much better manner; wherefore Verrocchio, being the intimate friend of Orsino, a worker in wax, who was considered in Florence to be very skilful in his vocation, undertook to show him how he might render himself eminent. It chanced that an occasion for the display of Orsino’s skill soon presented itself, for on the death of Giuliano de’ Medici, and the danger incurred by his brother Lorenzo, who was wounded at the same time, in Santa Maria del Fiore, it was ordained by the friends and relations of Lorenzo that many figures of him should be made and set up in various places, by way of thanksgiving to God for his safety. Then Orsino, among others, with the help of Andrea, made three figures in wax, of the size of life, forming the skeleton in wood, as we have before described, and completing it with split reeds. This frame-work was then covered with waxed cloth, folded and arranged with so much beauty and elegance that nothing better or more true to nature could be seen. The head, hands, and feet were afterwards formed in wax of greater thickness, but hollow within; the features were copied from the life, and the whole was painted in oil with such ornaments and additions of the hair and other things as were required, all which being entirely natural and perfectly well done, no longer appeared to be figures of wax, but living men, as may be seen in each of the three here alluded to. One of these is in the church which belongs to the Nuns of Chiarito, in the Via di San Gallo: it stands before the Crucifix by which