Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/287

Rh Baccio worked at these two figures of Adam, and Eve with great zeal, expecting to please the artists as well as the whole world by those works, wherein he had given entire satisfaction to himself; he finished and polished them therefore with the utmost care and affection. Having completed them, he then erected the two statues of Adam and Eve in their place; but when they were given to public view they experienced a fortune similar to that of his previous works; they were indeed assailed too cruelly with sonnets and Latin verses, the purport of one even being to the effect that, as Adam and Eve, having polluted Paradise by their sin, had justly merited to be driven thence, so these statues, having cumbered the earth sufficiently, did justly merit to be expelled the church. It is nevertheless a truth, that the figures are well proportioned, and in many parts very beautiful; for if there be not that grace in these works which some other masters have given to their performances, but which Baccio was not able to impart to his productions, they yet display so much art and excellence of design, that they merit considerable praise.

A gentlewoman who was examining these statues, being asked by certain nobles of her company, what she thought of the same, replied that she could not judge of the Adam; and, when further pressed to say what she thought of the Eve, ultimately answered, that there seemed to her to be two good things in the statue, and which merited commendation, namely, that it was white and firm; thus ingeniously censuring the artist, while she seemed to be giving him praise; seeing that she commended those qualities which are peculiar to the forms of woman, and which were likewise such as belonged of right and verity to the material, but not to the art and knowledge of the artist; in such sort that this ingenious lady did not really commend the master, but in fact expressed an opinion that there was nothing in the statue to deserve praise, unless it were the marble.