Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/292

284 thereof; when a certain part of the statues which were to be erected there was at once begun.

When Baccio perceived that the Duke would no longer accept his services, but was employing others, he was much displeased and grieved; he had indeed become so fanciful and eccentric, that neither in the house nor out of it could any one venture to speak to him. His conduct to his son Clemente was of the most extraordinary kind, since he permitted him to endure every species of suffering; wherefore, the latter, having made a large bust of the Duke in clay, and proposing to execute the same in marble, requested permission from his Excellency to depart and go to Rome, that he might thereby avoid the unreasonable treatment to which his father subjected him. The Duke replied that his favour should not be wanting to him; but Bandinelli, on the contrary, of whom he also requested leave to depart, would do nothing for him, although Clemente had always been of great use to himself in his works; nay, that youth was the right hand of Baccio in all his affairs in Florence, yet the father did not in the least regret his departure, but saw him leave his sight with indifference.

The young man arrived in Rome at an unfavourable season, and whether from too zealous an attention to his studies, or from some other irregularity of life, he died in the same year. He had left a bust of the Duke Cosimo in Florence, which was almost finished; this Bandinelli afterwards placed over the principal door of his house in the Via de’ Ginori, and a very beautiful work it is. Clemente also left a group of the Dead Christ, supported by Nicodemus, in an advanced state of execution; Nicodemus being the portrait from the life of Baccio himself; these statues, which were tolerably good ones, Bandinelli subsequently placed in the Church of the Servites, as will be related in the proper place.

The death of Clemente was a great loss to Baccio, as well as to art, and this Bandinelli discovered after the life of the youth had departed.

When Baccio gave the Altar of Santa Maria del Fiore to public view, the figure of God the Father was much cen-