Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/230

222 Cap in stone, which was to he placed over the balls used as the arms of the Medici, and the commission for which had been received by Tribolo from Messer Pier Francesco Riccio, Majordomo of the Duke: the youth completed this work also, with the addition of two little children, whose limbs are intertwined, and who, holding the ducal cap between them, place the same upon the coat of arms.

This escutcheon was erected over the door of a house which the Majordomo then occupied; it stands opposite to the church of San Giuliano, near that of the priests of Sant’ Antonio, and when tha artists of Florence beheld this wrork they pronounced a judgment respecting Piero, precisely similar to that previously formed by Tribolo. After this Piero sculptured a figure of a boy for one of the fountains of Castello; he is holding a fish which he presses closely in his arms, and from the mouth of which there flows water: and Tribolo having then given him a larger piece of marble, Piero made two boys therefrom; with their arms thrown around each other they hold fishes compressed in their hands, from whose mouths the water is gushing. These boys were so graceful in form, so beautiful of countenance, and so admirably executed at all points—the legs, the arms, the hair, every part, in short, wras so well done, that the ability of Piero to bring the most difficult work to perfection, was thereby rendered manifest to all.

Taking courage from his success, he then bought a piece of grey stone about two braccia and a half long, and having taken this to his dwelling which was at the corner of the Briga, Pietro began to work at it in the evening when he returned from his labours with Tribolo, as well as on festivals and sometimes during the night, until he gradually brought his work to completion. This was a figure of Bacchus with a Satyr at his feet; in one hand the God held a tazza, and in the other a bunch of grapes; a coronal formed from the vine encircling his brow: all which Piero had executed after a model made by himself in clay. In this, as well as in others of his earliest works, Piero gave evidence of the most admirable ease and facility, which permits nothing