Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/275

Rh brought to some degree of forwardness, but was never completed, nor placed on the basement prepared for its reception.

It is true that on the front of the pedestal he did finish a story in marble, wherein he represented the said Giovanni in mezzo-rilievo. He is in a seated position, and is surrounded by numerous figures of Captives who are brought before him, soldiers, that is to say, and women with dishevelled hair, as well as many nude figures; but the story is wholly destitute of invention, nor can it be said to produce a good effect in any part. At the end of this relief is a figure bearing a living pig on his shoulders, which is said to have been made for Messer Baldassare da Pescia, whom Baccio meant thereby to turn into derision, holding Messer Baldassare to be his enemy, because the latter had given the commission for the statues of Leo and Clement to other sculptors, as we have related above; besides that he had so proceeded in Pome as to compel from Bandinelli the restitution of the surplus moneys which he had received beforehand for those statues and figures: which restitution Baccio did not make without great inconvenience to himself.

Meanwhile Baccio was thinking of nothing but how to convince Duke Cosimo of the great extent to which the memory of the ancients had been maintained and their glories perpetuated by the statues and buildings which they had caused to be erected, and was constantly saying that his