Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/234

226 to Luca Martini. While Piero was thus working in Rome, and was occupied with the labours of which we have spoken, Luca Martini was appointed by the Duke of Florence to be Proveditore of Pisa, and in his new office he did not forget his friend, but wrote to him, on the contrary, telling him that he was preparing an abode for his reception, and had a piece of marble of three braccia ready for him to commence working on, so that he might return at his pleasure, seeing that he should want for nothing while he would remain with him.

Attracted by this promise and by the love which he bore to Luca, Piero determined to leave Rome and to make Pisa his dwelling place for some time, thinking he might there find opportunities for the exercise of his vocation, and the desired occasion for making trial of his ability. Having reached Pisa therefore, he found the piece of marble already in his chamber, where it had been placed by command of Luca, when he resolved to make a full-length figure thereof. But having discovered that the marble had a crack, by which it lost a braccio of its height, he resolved to make a recumbent figure instead of an erect one, as he had at first proposed, and accordingly produced a young River-god, pouring water from a vase which he holds, and which is raised by three children, who assist him to pour the stream into its bed. Beneath the feet of the River-god there is then seen a copious flow of water, wherein fishes are gliding along, while aquatic birds of various kinds are hovering over it.

Having finished this work, Piero gave it to Luca, who made a present of the same to the Duchess, by whom it was very highly prized, and the rather as her brother Don Garzia di Toledo, having then arrived in Pisa with his galleys, she was thus enabled to offer him a gift which he received with much pleasure, and which he afterwards used for the fountain of his garden on the Chiaja in Naples.

Now at that time Luca Martini was writing certain notes on the Commedia of Dante, and having shown to Piero the cruelty which Dante describes as having been perpetrated by the Pisans and the Archbishop Ruggieri, upon the Count XJgolino della Gherardesca, by causing him to die of hunger with four of his children, in the tower, therefore called the Tower of Famine, he thereby offered occasion to Vinci for a new work, and inspired him with the thought of another