Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/48

 the palace of Ottaviano de' Medici, where the Signora Margherita was to reside.

These festivals being at an end, Battista set himself industriously to draw the statues by Michelagnolo, which are in the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo, whither all the sculptors and painters of Florence were then wont to repair for the purpose of drawing and working in relief: all these figures Battista designed with the most careful study, and he made infinite progress; the error he had committed in not consenting to draw from the life, or to use colours, was nevertheless perceived, and his having never done any other thing besides drawing from statues, and some few objects of similar character, had given him a hardness and dryness of manner, of which it was sufficiently manifest that he could not so entirely divest himself but that everything he did presented a harsh and laboured aspect, as may be seen, among other instances, in a painting on canvas, wherein he has with great care depicted the violence suffered from Tarquinius by the Roman Lucrezia.

While Battista was thus continuing to frequent the Sacristy with other artists, he formed a friendship with the sculptor Bartolommeo Ammannati, who was then studying the works of Michelagnolo in company with many other sculptors, and this intimacy proceeded to such an extent that Ammannati received Battista and Genga of Urbino into his house, where they all lived together for some time, devoting themselves with very great profit to the studies of art.

The Duke Alessandro having met with his death in the year 1536, and the Signor Duke Cosimo de' Medici being elected in his place, many of the dependants of the departed sovereign remained in the service of the new one, but others did not. Among those who departed was the above-named Giorgio Vasari, who returned to Arezzo with the determination no more to follow Courts, seeing that he had lost his first Lord, the Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and afterwards the Duke Alessandro; but he caused Battista to be received into the service of Duke Cosimo, and that artist was set to work in the Guardaroba.

There he painted a large picture representing Pope Clement and the Cardinal Ippolito, whose figures he copied from pictures by Fra Bastiano and by