Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/260

252 to the end that as he would absolutely return to Bologna, he might complete the work which he had undertaken in that city. Having obtained many presents and marks of favour from the Duke Alessandro, Alfonso then returned to Bologna accordingly, but with the death of the Cardinal Ippolito still weighing on his mind, and unable to get over the loss he had sustained in being deprived of the occupation which he had anticipated from the sepulchral monuments, he fell into a very bad state of health, and was attacked by a grievous cuticular disease of the most violent character: this was after a time pronounced incurable; and being gradually consumed by its virulence, he was thereby overcome in the forty-ninth year of his age, and passed to a better life, bewailing himself continually and complaining of fortune, for that she had deprived him of a prince, from whom he might have reasonably hoped to obtain all that could render life happy: better had it been, he would declare, that this cruel destiny had closed the eyes of himself—of him, who was to be reduced to such misery, rather than of so prosperous a noble as was the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. Alfonso died in the year 1536.

The Sienese sculptor Michelagnolo had spent the greater part of his best years with other excellent sculptors in Sclavonia, when he repaired to Home on the following occasion. Pope Adrian had died, and the Cardinal Hincfort, who had been the protege of that pontiff, and was his most trusted friend, not unmindful of the many benefits he had received from him, resolved to erect a marble monument to his memory, and entrusted the care of the undertaking to the Sienese painter Baldassare Peruzzi. That artist therefore having prepared the models, desired that his friend and compatriot Michelagnolo, should proceed to the execution of the work; the latter commenced the sepulchre in question accordingly, placing a figure of Pope Adrian, of the size of life, extended on the sarcophagus, the portrait having been taken from the life. Beneath this figure he then sculptured the story of his arrival and public entrance into Pome, also in marble, showing the Roman people, who are proceeding to