Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/75

Rh our book, which are admirably well designed, and bear ample testimony to the skill and ability of Giovan-Francesco: he was exceedingly ready in the management of colours also, and produced pictures which are very good, although his principal vocation was sculpture.

The residence of Rustici was in the Via de Martelli, and he lived on terms of much amity with all the members of that family, which has ever been rich in men of ability and excellence, but he was more particularly intimate with Piero de’ Martelli; for whom he made certain small figures in full relief, a Madonna among the rest, seated amidst the clouds, with the Divine Child in her arms, and surrounded by Cherubim. At a later period Giovan-Francesco painted a figure similar to the above-mentioned, in oil and of a large size, adding a sort of garland formed of Cherubim, which encircles the head of the Virgin in the manner of a diadem.

The Medici family having returned to Florence, Rustici made himself known to the Cardinal Giovanni, by whom, as one who had been the protégé of his father Lorenzo, Giovan-Francesco was received with much kindness. But the fashions of a court were not to his liking; they were indeed entirely distasteful to his calm and upright nature, which had no tinge of ambition or self-seeking; he preferred to live a life apart, and after the manner of a philosopher, enjoying the repose and quiet of solitude: but he did not refuse occasional recreation, and frequented the society of such among liis fellow citizens as were known to him; he often met the friends of his art likewise, nor did he neglect to labour when he felt the disposition to do so and found an opportunity for exertion.

On the arrival of Pope Leo X. at Florence, in the year 1515, for example, being requested to execute certain statues by his intimate friend Andrea del Sarto, he did not refuse to comply, but completed the same, when they were pronounced to be most beautiful. They found favour more particularly