Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/472

464 discovering the difficulty of the work, was compelled to request the advice of Giuliano in respect to his plans, and to entreat that he, as an architect, would take the superintendence of the operations.

Having therefore set to work all the stone-masons and stone-cutters of Santa Maria del Fiore, the fabric was commenced, and Bandinello, pursuing the. counsels of Giuliano, resolved to let the work remain out of square, and partly following the course of the wall, it thus became necessary to make all the hewn stones with a certain obliquity of the surface, which required them to be laboriously prepared with the Pifferello, which is an instrument for bevelling diagonally or obliquely, and this gave so ungraceful an effect to the whole edifice, that it afterwards became very difficult to bring it into harmony with other works undertaken in that structure, as will be further insisted on in the life of Bandinello. Now this would not have occurred had Baccio Bandinello understood the details of architecture as he did those of sculpture, not to mention that the internal curves of the great recesses, where they are turned towards the side walls, have a dwarfish appearance, and to say nothing of the central recess, which is however far from being without defect, all of which we shall speak at more length in the life of Baccio Bandinello.

But after this undertaking had been proceeded with for ten years, it was laid aside, and so it remained for some time. It is true that the cut stones for the cornice, with the columns, those of stone as well as of marble, were prepared with the utmost diligence by the carvers and stone-cutters, under the care of Giuliano, and the masonry was so carefully executed that it is not possible to find work more accurately measured or more exactly put together; in this respect indeed Giuliano well merits to be celebrated as most excellent: the whole structure, as will be related in its proper place, was afterwards completed, with certain additions, in the space of five months by Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo.

Giuliano meanwhile, never neglecting his bottega, gave his attention, as did his brothers with him, to the execution of various carvings and wood-work, proceeding with the pavement of Santa Maria del Fiore, where he was sought by Bandinello, Giuliano being chief superintendent and architect