Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/298

290 Buonarroti, requesting the latter to give his opinion of the matter, and afterwards to move the Duke to let Ammannato have the marble. All this Giorgio did very willingly, and the Duke was thereby induced to command that an arch of the Loggia in the Piazza should be enclosed, and that Ammannato should there prepare a model as large as the colossal statue was required to be.

Having heard this, Benvenuto rode off in a great fury to Pisa, where the Duke then was, and told his Excellency that he could not endure to behold his own talents trampled under foot by one whom he knew to be inferior to himself; he therefore begged permission to prepare a large model in competition with Ammannato, and in the same place. The Duke who desired to content him, thereupon gave Benvenuto leave to enclose another arch of the Loggia for himself, causing materials at the same time to be given to him, to the end that he might make the large model in emulation of Ammannato, as he desired.

While these masters were both thus occupied in preparing these models, and that both were keeping their rooms carefully closed, to the end that neither might see what the other was doing, although the enclosures were placed back to back, there rose up the Flemish sculptor Giovan Bologna, a youth of great talent and of spirit, equal to that of either of the others. This last-mentioned artist being attached to the service of the Signor Don Francesco, Prince of Florence, requested permission from his Excellency to make the model of a colossal figure, of size equal to the dimensions of the marble in question. Not that Maestro Giovan Bologna had any expectation of being permitted to execute the statue in marble, but he hoped at least to have an opportunity for the display of his skill, and for showing what he could do; having received the permission of the prince, therefore, he also then commenced his model, which he prepared in the convent of Santa Croce.