Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/310

302 who could with difficulty restrain his laughter on hearing the troubles of the poor Giuliano, the latter begged that Buonarroti would tell him how to make eight or ten figures in the foreground of his picture, soldiers standing in a line, in the manner of a guard namely, but being, some in the act of flight, some fallen down, some wounded, and others dead, respecting all which Giuliano was at a loss, not knowing how to manage the foreshortening, nor being able to comprehend in what manner they could all find room in so small a space, if placed in the manner he desired, in a line that is to say.

Buonarroti, who had compassion on the poor man, agreed to help him; he approached the picture, therefore, with a piece of charcoal, and by a few strokes, sketched the outline of a range of admirable nude figures, which were foreshortened in various attitudes, and fell in divers manners, some backwards, others forwards, with dead and wounded, all represented in the judicious and excellent manner peculiar to Michelagnolo. Having done this, the latter departed much thanked by Giuliano, who, no long time afterwards, took his intimate friend Tribolo to see what Buonarroti had done, relating the whole affair to him at the same time. But, as Buonarroti had merely sketched the figures in outline, as we have said, Giuliano could not execute them, because there was neither shadow nor anything more than the mere outline; wherefore Tribolo, in his turn, resolved to assist him, and made sketches of several beautifully-executed models in clay, to which, by means of the gradina, which is a curved instrument, he imparted all the boldness that Michelagnolo had given to the drawing, and having worked them with tills, to the end that they might have more firmness and force, he then gave them to Giuliano.

But this manner did not please the fancy of Bugiardini, with whose love of smoothness it was not in accord; wherefore, when Tribolo had departed, he took a brush, and, gradually passing over them with water, rendered the models so smooth as to efface entirely all the effect produced by the gradina, and polished them in such sort that whereas the lights should have appeared and given depth to the shadows, he ended by taking all that was good away, and destroying that which formed the perfection of the work. These doings being afterwards declared to Tribolo by Giuliano himself, the