Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/308

300 dom, although he was perpetually cogitating on the different ways in which those wheels might be accomplished, and how the lightnings and fires by which they were consumed should be represented; but, changing one day what he had done the day before, he could thus never come to an end in all the time thus consumed, as we have said, over that work.

It is true that in the meantime Giuliano accomplished many other works, and among these may be mentioned, the portrait of Messer Francesco Guicciardini, who, having returned from Bologna, was then writing his history at his villa of Montici. This was a tolerably good resemblance, and gave considerable satisfaction. He also painted the portrait of the Signora Angiola de’ Rossi, sister of the Count of Sansecondo, which he did for the Signor Alessandro Vitelli, the husband of the lady, who was then engaged in the defence of Florence.

For Messer Ottaviano de’ Medici, moreover, Giuliano executed a picture wherein he delineated two whole length figures, the one of Pope Clement seated, and the other of Fra Niccolò della Magna, standing upright. This he copied from a work by Fra Sebastiano del Piombo. In another picture he also painted a seated figure of Pope Clement, with Bartolommeo Yalori kneeling before the Pontiff, to whom he is speaking. This he executed with incredible care and patience.

Now the before-mentioned Messer Ottaviano had secretly begged Giuliano to make him a likeness of Michelagnolo Buonarroti, and the painter’ commenced his work accordingly. Having kept Michelagnolo, who took much pleasure in his conversation, fixed for some two hours in one position therefore, Bugiardini then exclaimed, “Michelagnolo, if you have any mind to see your very self, get up and look at this, for I have now caught the exact expression of the countenance.” Michelagnolo having risen accordingly, and glanced at the portrait, cried out, laughing, to Giuliano, “What the devil have you been about here? you have painted me with one eye up in the temple; give heed a little to what you are doing.”

Hearing this, Giuliano, who had been mightily elated, looked first at the portrait and then at the living original many times, after which he replied very seriously, “I do not