Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/232

224 prepared by Tribolo, who now proposed to place children in full relief on the edge thereof, these he wished to have lying in various attitudes and sporting with their arms and legs in the water: they were to be cast in bronze, but he would first have Piero model the figures of the same in clay, when he caused them to be cast by the sculptor Zanobi Lastricati, who was an able and experienced master of casting works in bronze. These children were placed around the fountain no long time since, and are indeed most beautiful to behold.

Now Tribolo was in daily intercourse with Luca Martini, who was then superintendent of the buildings for the new market, and who greatly desired to promote the welfare of II Vinci, whose excellence in art, and the propriety of his deportment, he found equally agreeable and commendable. He therefore gave the young artist a piece of marble, twothirds of a braccio high and a braccio and a quarter long; and from this Vinci produced a figure of Our Saviour Christ fastened to the column and scourged. In this work the rules of basso-rilievo and of design are observed with great care and all who considered that Piero had not yet attained his sixteenth year, were amazed at this production, seeing that in the five years of his study, this youth had made acquisitions in art, which others attain only after length of life and the varied experience of many labours.

About this time Tribolo had accepted the office of superintending the drainage for the city of Florence, and in the fulfilment of his duties had commanded that the sewer of the Piazza Vecchia of Santa Maria Novella should be raised, to the intent that, being rendered more capacious, it might the more effectually receive all the waters which flowed into it from various parts. For this work Tribolo desired II Vinci to make the model of a great mask, three braccia in extent, and this mask, opening the mouth, was thus to engulph all the rain-water.

The model being prepared, the execution of the work was committed by the officials of the Torre to Piero, and he, to complete the undertaking the more readily, called the sculptor Lorenzo Marignolli to his aid, in company with whom he finished the mask, executing the same in a