Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/96

84 work was not finished when the King died; and on the accession of King Henry to the throne our artist was one of the many persons who were deprived of their pensions, the expenses of the Court being considerably decreased.

It is said that Giovan-Francesco, being then old, and not in very good circumstances, lived for some time on the rent which he received for the large palace and its adjacent buildings, for which he was indebted to the generosity or King Francis; but Fortune, not content with all that this man had before endured, was preparing for him a very great blow in addition to the rest, seeing that Ki^g Henry presented the palace above-mentioned to the Signor Pietro Strozzi, and Giovan-Francesco would have found himself in a most grievous strait, had it not been for the compassion of that noble, who, grieving much for the distress of Kustici (the latter having made himself known to Pietro), came in happy hour to the rescue, and that in his utmost need; Strozzi installing him in an abbey, or some place of that kind, which belonged to his brother. There the needy old age of Giovan-Francesco was not only guarded from want, but he was very comfortably served and cared for, as befitted his condition and merits, even to the end of his life.

Il Rustici died at the age of eighty, and his possessions came for the most part into the possession of the abovenamed Signore, Piero Strozzi; but I will not omit to mention, that while Antonio Mini, a disciple of Buonarroti, was living in France, and receiving much aid as well as kindness from Giovan-Francesco, there came into the hands of the latter many designs and models by Michelagnolo, one portion of which was, at a later period, in the possession of the sculptor, Benvenuto Cellini, who was then in France, and who afterwards brought those effects to Florence.

Giovan-Francesco Eustici, as I have before said, was not