Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/192

184 joicing for the splendour and ornament which she owed to the mind and heart of that prince. But the adverse fortune of Tribolo opposed herself to this arrangement, and exactly at the moment when he would have commenced the statue of the Earth, whether from change of air, from the natural delicacy of his constitution, or from some irregularity in the mode of his life, he fell very seriously ill, and his malady having terminated in quartan fever, hung about him for many months, to his indescribable vexation, seeing that the grief which he felt at finding himself compelled to abandon his work, while the Monk and Raffaello da Montelupo were gaining possession of the field, tormented him no less than the malady itself.

Eagerly desiring to overcome this disease, to the end that he might not remain behind his competitors, whose names he daily heard more and more exalted, he prepared a large model in clay for the statue of the Earth, ill and weak as he was, and having finished it, began to work on the marble with so much care and solicitude, that the foremost part of the figure was already brought out, when Fortune, who is ever ready to impede the progress of a fair commencement, by the death of Pope Clement at a moment when it was least feared, cut short the expectations of many excellent artists, who had hoped, beneath the guidance of Michelagnolo, to obtain for themselves immortal glory and perpetual fame.

Still suffering from illness, Tribolo was utterly confounded by this new misfortune, and lost heart altogether. There seemed to be nothing whereby he might hope to prosper either in his native Florence or elsewhere, and he was ready to resign himself to despair. But Giorgio Vasari, who was ever his friend, and loving him from his heart, assisted him whenever he found it possible to do so, consoled him as he best could, and entreated him not to lose heart, seeing that he, Giorgio, would himself so contrive that the Duke Alessandro should find him something to do; and this Vasari hoped to accomplish by means of his favour with the magnificent Ottaviano de’ Medici, to whose service he was somewhat closely attached. By these means Vasari contrived to make Tribolo acquire a little courage, and the latter busied himself, while endeavours were in course of being made for his advantage, in the preparation of copies in terra