Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/269

Rh miracles are performed, and is clothed in the habiliments worn by Lorenzo when, wounded in the throat and with that part bound up, he appeared at the window of his palace to show himself to the people, who had flocked thither to assure themselves whether he were alive, as they desired, or whether he were dead, to the end that in the latter case they might avenge him. The second figure of Lorenzo is attired in the lucco, which is a dress peculiar to the Florentine citizens, and this is in the church of the Servites, the Nunziata, namely: it stands over the smaller door where the wax lights are sold. The third was sent to Assisi for the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, and was placed before the Madonna of that place, where the same Lorenzo de’ Medici, as we have related, had caused the whole road to be paved with bricks all the way from Santa Maria to that gate of Assisi which leads towards San Francesco. He had likewise restored the fountains which Cosimo, his grandfather, had caused to be constructed there. But to return to the waxen images. All those in the Church of the Servites which have a capital 0 in the base, with the letter E, within it and a cross above, are by the hand of Crsino, and are all exceedingly beautiful; there are, indeed, very few who have equalled them. This art, although it has maintained its existence to our own times, is nevertheless rather on the decline than otherwise, either because there is less devotion than formerly, or for some other cause.

We will now return to Verrocchio. In addition to all that we have already enumerated, this master executed crucifixes in wood, with various works in terra-cotta. In this last he was an excellent artist, as may be seen from the models for the reliefs of the altar of San Giovanni, as also from certain very beautiful figures of children and a bust of St. Jerome,