Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/422

410 affection, and it was thus soon believed that the disciple would ultimately equal his master, nay perhaps surpass him. The attachment of these two was indeed of such a character that being almost like father and son, Jacopo was no longer called De’ Tatti, but Sansovino, and as he was then named, so is he now and ever will be called.

When Jacopo began to exercise his art he was so powerfully aided by Nature, that although he was not particularly studious, nor very diligent in his work, yet in whatever he did there was a grace and facility, with a certain ease, which was very pleasing to the eyes of the artists, seeing that every draught, sketch, or outline of his, displayed a boldness and animation which it has been given to but few among the sculptors to possess. The intercourse and friendship subsisting in their childhood between Jacopo and Andrea del Sarto, was also very useful to them both; pursuing the same manner in design, they exhibited a similar grace in execution, the one in painting, the other in sculpture; and as they frequently conferred together on the difficulties of Art, Jacopo meanwhile making models for Andrea, they assisted each other greatly. And that this is true we have proof in the picture of San Francesco, executed for the Nuns of the Via Pentolini, and in a San Giovanni Evangelista, which was taken from an exquisite mould in terra, which Sansovino made in those days, in competition with Baccio da Montelupo.

For it chanced that at this time the Guild of Porta Santa Maria was about to have a statue in bronze, cast for a niche of Or San Michele, which is opposite to the Wool-Shearers: hut although Jacopo’s model was the more beautiful, yet Montelupo, as being an older master, obtained the commission. This model, which is a most exquisite one, is now in possession of the heirs of Nanni Unghero. Sansovino was then the friend of Nanni, for whom he prepared the large models in clay, of Angels in the form of children, with one for a figure of San Niccolò, of Tolentino, which were afterwards carved in wood, with the aid of Sansovino; all these figures being of the size of life. They were placed in the Chapel of San Niccolò, in the Church of Santo Spirito.

Becoming known, by the productions here enumerated, to all the Florentine artists, and being considered a young man of great genius and excellent character, Jacopo, to his