Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/254

242 be compared with it, to such perfection of beauty and excellence did our artist bring his work. The outline of the lower limbs is most beautiful. The connexion of each limb with the trunk is faultless, and the spirit of the whole form is divine: never since has there been produced so fine an attitude, so perfect a grace, such beauty of head, feet, and hands; every part is replete with excellence; nor is so much harmony and admirable art to be found in any other work. He that has seen this, therefore, need not care to see any production besides, whether of our own times or those preceding it. For this Statue, Michelagnolo received from Soderini the sum of four hundred crowns; it was placed on its pedestal in the year 1504, and the glory resulting to the artist therefrom became such as to induce the Gonfaloniere to order a David in bronze, which, when Michelagnolo had completed, was sent to France.

About the same time our artist commenced, but did not finish, two Medallions in marble, one for Taddeo ‘Taddei, which is now in his house; the other for Bartolommeo Pitti, which was presented to Luigi Guicciardini by Fra Miniato Pitti of Monte Oliveto his great friend, and whose acquaintance with Painting as well as with Cosmography and other sciences, is very extensive. ‘These works also obtained high approbation, as did likewise a marble Statue of St. Matthew, which Michelagnolo then sketched for the Superintendents of Works to Santa Maria del Fiore, and which, merely sketched as it is, gives clear evidence of the perfection to which the finished performance would have attained, and serves well to teach the Sculptor how figures are to be drawn from the marble in such sort that they shall not prove abortions, and also in a manner which leaves to the judgment all fitting opportunity for such alterations and ameliorations as may subsequently be demanded.