Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/440

428 to Germany, conferred many marks of favour on Sansovino, whom he saw in Peschiera. This master was exceedingly desirous of glory, and, to the end that his memory might survive him, he spent much of his property for others, greatly injuring his descendants thereby. The judges of Art affirm that, although yielding on the whole to Michelagnolo, yet Sansovino was the superior of that artist in certain points. In his draperies, his children, and the expression which he gave to his women, for example, Jacopo never had an equal. The draperies by his hand are, indeed, most delicately beautiful; finely folded, they preserve to perfection the distinction between the nude and draped portions of the form. His children are soft flexible figures with none of the muscular development proper only to adults; the little round legs and arms are truly of flesh, and in nowise different to those of Nature herself. The faces of his women are sweet and lovely; so graceful withal, that none can be more so, as may be seen in certain figures of the Madonna, in those of Venus, and in others by his hand.

This master, so renowned in Sculpture, and so great in Architecture, had lived by the grace of God, who had endowed him with that ability which rendered him illustrious to the degree that we have described, up to the age of ninety-three years; when, feeling himself somewhat weary of body, he lay down in his bed to repose himself. He felt no kind of illness, and frequently proposed to rise and dress himself, as being in perfect health, but remaining thus for about six weeks he felt himself becoming weaker, and requested to have the Sacraments of the Church administered to him; this having been done, although he still expected to live some years, Sansovino departed on the 2nd of November, 1570, and, notwithstanding that the years of his life had come to their end in the pure course of Nature, yet all Venice lamented his loss.

He left a son called Erancesco, born in Rome in the year 1521, and who became a very learned man in Law as well as Letters, From this son Sansovino had three grandchildren, a boy called after his grandfather Jacopo, and two girls, one called Florence, who died early, to the infinite