Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/318

306 bidding them manage the matter as an affair of their own. The fabric, with all the materials collected, was then committed, without Michelagnolo knowing anything of what was going forward, to Nanni, who had full power to treat it as he pleased, when he not only neglected the precautions needful to the security of the foundations, but even removed and sold a great part of the blocks of travertine with which the bridge had been anciently strengthened and paved (a thing which greatly added to the stability and duration of the structure), supplying the place of those blocks with gravel, and materials of similar kind, so that there was no want of solidity in appearance. Nanni also made bulwarks and other external defences, causing the Bridge to be seemingly well restored, while in fact it had been much weakened and deteriorated. Five years afterwards, however, and when the flood of 1557 came down, the whole fabric fell to ruin, in such a manner as to prove the error of judgment which the Clerks of the Chamber had committed, and the injury which Rome had suffered from their disregard of Michelagnolo’s advice. He had indeed frequently predicted the ruin of the bridge to his friends, and I remember that when we were one day crossing it on horseback, he said, “Giorgio, this bridge shakes beneath us, let us be gone, that it may not fall while we are on it.”

But to return to a subject before touched on: when the work of Montorio was, to my great satisfaction, completed, I returned to Florence to the service of Duke Cosimo; this was in the year 1554. The departure of Vasari grieved Michelagnolo, as indeed it did Georgio, and as no day passed wherein the adversaries of the master did not labour to vex him, now in one way and now in another, so did these two not fail to write to each other daily. In the April of the same year Vasari gave Michelagnolo notice, that a son had been born to his nephew Leonardo, the child, whom Georgio had accompanied to his baptism, having been attended by a most honourable train of noble ladies, and receiving the name of Buonarroto. To this letter Michelagnolo replied by the following:—

“,—I have felt much pleasure in reading your last, seeing that you still remember the poor old man, and also because you were present at the triumph