Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/297

Rh degree that he was taken ill and compelled to retire to his house. Here his malady became daily more serious, and at the end of eight days he died, being then in his seventysecond year, and having up to that time been robust and healthy, without having ever suffered many bodily ailments. He was buried with honourable obsequies, and his remains were placed beside those of his father in the above-named sepulchre, executed, as we have said, by himself, and whereon was inscribed the following epitaph:— 

Bandinelli left sons and daughters, who were the heirs of his large possessions in houses and land, in gold and silver; and to the world he left the works in sculpture by us described, with designs in great numbers, most of which are in the possession of his children, but some of them we have in our book of drawings, and these are so good that better could scarcely be.

After Baccio’s death the contest respecting the block of marble became more eager than ever. Benvenuto being constantly about the Duke respecting it, and considering himself to have the best right to the same, in virtue of a small wax model which he had prepared, and for which he desired that the Duke would give him the block; while Ammannato, as being a sculptor of marbles, and more extensively experienced in such works than Benvenuto, thought that for many reasons the work did more justly appertain to himself.

Now at that time it happened that Giorgio Vasari had to go to Home with the Cardinal, the son of the Duke, at the period of his receiving the Hat namely, when Ammannato gave to the former a small model in wax, according to the fmure which he desired to extract from that marble, with a piece of wood of the exact size in length and width of the marble in question, and of similar shape and inclination to that presented by the block, to the end that Giorgio might take them to Rome, and there show them to Michelagnolo