Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/247

Rh of engraving also would succeed with him, he agreed with Agostino Yeneziano the engraver, to have a nude figure of Cleopatra executed by that artist, with another and larger plate filled with anatomical studies, from the last-mentioned of which he derived great credit.

He afterwards prepared a figure in wax of St. Jerome doing penance; the form is excessively attenuated, showing the muscles and nerves, and with the skin wrinkled and dry on the bones: this was a work in full relief, one braccio and a half high, and was executed by Baccio with such extraordinary care, that all the artists, and more particularly Leonardo da Vinci, declared they had never seen a work of the kind in higher perfection, or giving proof of more profound art. That figure Baccio took to Giovanni, Cardinal de’ Medici, and to the Magnificent Giuliano his brother, and by means thereof, made himself known to them as the son of the goldsmith Michelagnolo, receiving from them many praises of his work, besides other proofs of favour: this was about the year 1512, and when the Medici had returned to their house and state.

About the same time, certain Apostles in marble were in process of execution at the house belonging to the Wardens of Works, in Santa Maria del Fiore; and these were to be erected in the marble tabernacles, and to occupy the same places wherein were the Apostles painted by Lorenzo di Bicci.* By the intervention of the Magnificent Giuliano, therefore, the commission for executing the San Piero, a figure of four braccia and a half high, was confided to Baccio Bandinelli, who completed the same after the lapse of a very long time: this work does not exhibit the highest perfection of the sculptor’s art, but there is nevertheless very good design to be seen in it. The figure remained in the house of the Wardens from 1513 to 1565, in which year the Duke Cosimo caused the church of Santa Maria del Fiore, which had received no embellishment since its erection, to be white-washed on the occasion of the marriage of his daughter-in-law, the Queen Joanna of Austria, and at the same time commanded that for the further enrichment of the building, four of the Apostles