Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/424

412 sition, and other things; a very beautiful work it was. All these models were afterwards collected by Messer Giovanni Gaddi, and they are now in his house on the Piazza of the Madonna in Florence. Sansovino then became known to the Cortonese painter, Maestro Luca Signorelli; to Bramantino da Milano; Bernardino Pinturicchio; Cesare Cesariano, who was at that time in high repute for his Commentaries on Vitruvius; and to many other persons of genius and renown flourishing at that period. Bramante then desired that Sansovino should be presented to Pope Julius, and commissioned him to restore certain works of antiquity, which he did with so much care and grace that His Holiness, and all who beheld them, considered it impossible that they could have been done better.

Stimulated by the praises he received, and eager to surpass his previous performances, Sansovino then devoted himself so zealously to his studies that, being of a somewhat delicate constitution, he became seriously ill, and was compelled to return to Florence for the saving of his life; happily, however, his native air, the aid of youth, and the cares of his physicians, quickly restored him to health. Now, Messer Piero Pitti was then desirous of having a Madonna in marble executed for that front of the Mercato Nuovo, in Florence, where the clock is, and as there were many able young artists as well as old masters then in Florence, he thouirht the work ought to be given to him who should make the best model. He consequently had one prepared by Baccio da Montelupo, another by Zaccheria Zacchi, of Volterra, who had also returned that same year to Florence, with one by Baccio Bandinelli, and a fourth by Sansovino. They were then compared; when Lorenzo Credi, an excellent painter as well as a man of much judgment and goodness, declared the honour and the commission to belong of right to Sansovino, an opinion wherein the other judges, artists, and all who understood the matter fully concurred.

But although the work was adjudged to him accordingly, the procuring and bringing down the marbles were so much delayed by the envy and malicious contrivances of Averardo da Filicaja, who greatly favoured Bandinello and detested