Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/77

Rh cast in bronze, it proved to be a performance of such extraordinary beauty that nothing better could possibly be seen, and it was sent to the King of Spain. In a medallion of similar size, but in marble. Rustic! next produced a figure of Our Lady, in alto-rilievo, the Virgin has the Divine Child in her arms, and San Giovanni, also a little child, is beside her; this was placed in the first Hall of the Magistrates of the Guild of For Santa Maria.

These works having brought Giovan-Francesco into high credit, the Consuls of the Guild of Merchants, who had at that time caused certain hideous figures of marble, made in 1240, which had stood over the three gates of the Church of San Giovanni to be taken down, as we have before related; these Consuls, I say, having commissioned Andrea Contucci of Sansovino, to execute those which were to replace the old ones, over that door of San Giovanni which looks towards the Misericordia, now gave Rustic! the statues which were to be erected over the door which is at the side opposite to the Canonicate of the church, and commanded that he should prepare three figures in bronze, each four braccia high; these ligures to be of similar subjects to the old ones, a San Giovanni preaching namely, and represented as standing between a Pharisee and a Levite.

Now this work was one entirely after the heart of Giovan-Francesco, first, because it was of so much importance, and was to be erected in a place of such great renown, and next, on account of the competition with Andrea Contucci: he set hand to it therefore immediately, and made a small model, but this he greatly surpassed by the excellence of the work itself, to which he gave all the consideration which so important an undertaking demanded, and at which he laboured steadily with infinite diligence. The work being finished, was considered to be in all its parts the most perfectly composed and best arranged performance of the kind that had ever then been seen, the figures exhibiting an absolute perfection of form, and the aspect of the faces having singular grace as well as infinite majesty and force: the nude arms and lower limbs are likewise most admirably executed, and are conjoined to the trunks in a manner so entirely irreproachable, that better could not be; and, to say nothing of the beauty