Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/306

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Previous to the siege of Florence in 1530, it was the custom in that city to carry before the bier, at the burial of the nobles or of those connected with them, a range of small banners affixed to, or hung around some picture, and borne on the head of a porter; these banners it was then usual to leave in the church as a present, and in perpetuation of the memory of the deceased and the family. When Cosimo Bucellai the elder expired therefore, his sons Bernardo and Palla, thinking to do something new, resolved to have no banners, but a large picture forming a standard in their stead: this they determined to have made of four braccia wide, 'and five high, with certain pendants, bearing the arms of the Rucellai family, affixed to the lower edge thereof. Having committed the work to Giuliano accordingly, he painted four large figures, admirably well executed in the body of the standard; S.S. Cosimo and Damian o namely, with San Pietro and San Paolo, all works of great beauty and finished with more care than had ever before been bestowed on the painting of a banner.

These and other works of Giuliano having been seen by Mariotti Albertinelli, the latter having remembered the extraordinary care with which Bugiardini studied the drawings laid before him, and from which he did not permit himself to depart by a hair’s breadth, resolved, as he was in those days preparing to abandon the study of art, that a picture which had been formerly left merely sketched on the gypsum of the panel and shadowed, after his manner, with water-colours by Fra Bartolommeo, the companion and friend of Mariotto, should be confided for its completion to Giuliano Bugiardini.

The latter therefore set hand to the painting, which he finished with great labour and pains, and the picture was placed in the church of San Gallo; but that church, with the convent attached to it, having been destroyed at the siege, the painting was then carried to the Hospital of the Priests, in the Yia San Gallo, and there fixed within the building. It was afterwards taken thence to the convent of San Marco, and was finally deposited in San Jacopo-tra-Fossi, at the corner of the Alberti, where it may still be seen on the high altar. The subject of the work is Our Saviour dead,