Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/355

Rh make good use of the woi’ks of others.” A certain painter, I know not who, had produced a picture wherein there was an ox that was better than all besides, when, being asked why the artist had made that animal more life-like than the rest, Michelagnolo replied, “Every painter draws himself well.” Passing one day by San Giovanni, in Florence, he was asked his opinion of the doors, and said, “They are so beautiful that they deserve to be used as the gates of Paradise.” Seeing a prince who changed his plans daily, and was never in one mind, he remarked to a friend, “The head of this Signore is like a weather-cock; it turns round with every wind that touches it.” Going to see a work in sculpture which was about to be fixed in its place, the sculptor took great pains to arrange the lights, that the work might be seen well, when Michelagnolo said:—“Do not trouble yourself; the principal question is, how it will bear the light of the Piazza,”—meaning to imply that when a work is given to public view, the people judge it, w^hether good or bad. There was a great prince in Pome who desired to pass for a good architect, and had caused certain niches to be made wherein he meant to place figures; each recess was three times the height of its depth, with a ring at the summit, and here the prince had various statues placed, but the}’" did not turn out well. He then asked Michelagnolo what he could put into the niches. “Hang a bunch of eels in that Ping,” replied the master.

With the Commissioners of San Pietro there was associated a gentleman who professed to understand Vitruvius, and to criticize the works accomplished. “You have now a man in the building who has great genius,” remarked some one to Michelagnolo; “True,” replied our artist, “but he has a bad judgment.” A painter had executed a story, for which he had taken so many parts from drawings and other pictures, that there was nothing in it which was not copied: this being shown to Michelagnolo, and his opinion requested, he made answer, “It is very well; but at the day of Judgment, when every body shall retake its own limbs, what will this Story do, for then it will have nothing remaining?”—a warning to those who would practise art that they should do something for themselves. Passing once through Modena, he saw many beautiful figures which the Modanese sculptor. Maestro Antonio Bigarino, had made of terra-cotta, coloured