Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/271

Rh or too much adulation, or both together, seeing that he has placed men who are deified, the first founders of our religion—after Christ himself—and most especially beloved by God, beneath our Popes, to whom he makes them yield the first place; giving them positions unworthy of them, as being inferior to those held by Leo and Clement: a mode of proceeding, which as it must be displeasing to God and the saints, so this his design cannot be pleasing to the Popes or other men, since, as it appears to me, religion—I mean our own, which is the true religion—ought to be placed before all other considerations, and held superior to every other respect by all men. I think also that when we propose to do honour to any man, whomsoever it may be, we ought to restrict and moderate our expressions, restraining them within certain limits, to the end that the intended praise and honour may not become degraded to another purpose,—I mean to say, the base one of flattery, which first disgraces the person offering it, and next does wrong to him for whom it is intended; nor, if the latter have right feeling, can he be pleased therewith, but on the contrary feel offended.

Baccio Bandinelli therefore, by doing as I have described above, made known to all perhaps that he had much devotion in his heart towards the Popes, but very little judgment as to the proper means of exalting and doing honour to those Pontiffs in their sepulchres.

The above mentioned models were taken by the sculptor to Monte Cavallo, where is the garden of Cardinal Pidolfi at Sant’ Agata, and where the Prelate was that evening entertaining the Cardinals Cibo, Salviati, and Messer Baldassare da Pescia at supper, they having all assembled there for the purpose of coming to a conclusion, as respected the manner to be observed in the sepulchral monuments. While they were thus at table, there arrived the sculptor Solosmeo, an amusing and free-spoken man, who was much in the habit of declaring his mind of all persons, and was but little disposed to be friendly with Baccio. The message of his arrival being brought, and when Cardinal Ridolfi had given orders for his admission, he turned to Baccio and said, “I wish that we should hear what Solosmeo will say respecting the contract