Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/209

Rh the full half of that street was also decorated with very beautiful stories, executed by the hands of many artists, but the greater part of them designed by Baccio Bandinelli. On the 3rd of September, then, in that year, it was that Pope Leo made his entry into Florence, and the preparations thus made for that occasion were adjudged to be the most magnificent, as well as the most beautiful, that ever had been made at any time for the reception of a prince.

But let us now return to Andrea: being again required to prepare another picture for the King of France, he finished one in a short time, wherein he represented a Madonna of extraordinary beauty; this was sent immediately into France, where the merchants received four times as much for the work as they had paid for it to the painter. Now it chanced that Pier Francesco Borgherini had at that time caused rich carvings in wood to be executed by Baccio d’Agnolo for the decoration of coffers, backs of chairs, seats of difi*erent forms, with a bedstead in walnut-wood, all of great beauty, and intended for the furnishing forth of an apartment. He therefore desired that the paintings thereof should be equal to and correspond with the rest of the ornaments. To that end, therefore, he commissioned Andrea del Sarto to paint the history of Joseph the son of Jacob, in figures of no great size, and these our artist was to execute in competition with Granaccio and Jacopo da Pontormo, who had produced certain paintings thete which are very beautiful; he set to work accordingly, with even more than his usual assiduity, making extraordinary efforts and expending a very large amount of time, to the end that his performance might surpass those of the before-mentioned masters; nor did the endeavours thus made fail to produce the result desired, seeing that the variety of circumstances which the facts of the story required him to represent, gave Andrea an opportunity of showing how much