with the fountains of the Duke, Tribolo made for a niche over a
fish-pond which is at the head of a fowling-place, a river-god of
grey-stone, of the size of life, which pours water into a very large
basin of the same stone; which figure is made of pieces, and put
together with such diligence and art, that it appears to be all of one
block. Tribolo then set his hand, at the command of his Excellency, to
attempting to finish the staircase of the library of S. Lorenzo--that,
namely, which is in the vestibule before the door; but after he had
placed four steps in position, not finding either the plan or the
measurements of Michelagnolo, by order of the Duke he went to Rome,
not only to hear the opinion of Michelagnolo with regard to that
staircase, but also to make an effort to bring him to Florence. But he
did not succeed either in the one object or in the other, for
Michelagnolo, not wishing to leave Rome, excused himself in a handsome
manner, and as for the staircase he declared that he remembered
neither the measurements nor anything else. Tribolo, therefore, having
returned to Florence, and not being able to continue the work of that
staircase, set himself to make the pavement of the said library with
white and red bricks, after the manner of some pavements that he had
seen in Rome; but he added a filling of red clay to the white clay
mixed with bole, in order to produce various effects of carving in
those bricks; and thus he made in that pavement a copy of the ceiling
and coffered work above--a notion that was highly extolled. He then
began, but did not finish, a work that was to be placed on the main
tower of the defences of the Porta a Faenza, for Don Giovanni di Luna,
the castellan at that time--namely, an escutcheon of grey-stone, and a
large eagle in full relief with two heads, which he made in wax to the
end that it might be cast in bronze, but nothing more was done with
it, and of the escutcheon only the shield was finished.
Now it was the custom in the city of Florence to have almost every
year on the principal piazza, on the evening of the festival of S.
John the Baptist, towards nightfall, a girandola--that is, a
contrivance full of fire-trumpets, rockets, and other fireworks; which
girandola had the form now of a temple, now of a ship, sometimes of
rocks, and at times of a city or of an inferno, according as it
pleased the designer; and one year the charge of making one was given
to Tribolo, who, as will be described below, made it very
beautifully. Of the various manners of these fireworks, and
particularly of set pieces, Vannoccio of Siena and others give an
account, and on this subject I shall enlarge no further; but I must
say something as to the nature of these girandole. The whole
structure, then, is of wood, with broad compartments radiating
outwards from the foot, to the end that the rockets, when they have
been lighted, may not set fire to the other fireworks, but may rise in
due order from their separate places, one after another, filling the
heavens in proper succession with the fire that blazes in the
girandola both above and below. They are distributed, I say, at wide
intervals, to the end that they may not burn all at once, and may
produce a beautiful effect; and the same do the mortars, which are
bound to the firm parts of the girandola, and make the most beautiful
and joyous noises. The fire-trumpets, likewise, are fitted in among
the ornaments, and are generally contrived so as to discharge through
the mouths of masks and other suchlike things. But the most important
point is to arrange the girandola in such a manner that the lights
that burn in certain vases may last the whole night, and illuminate
the piazza; wherefore the whole work is connected together by a simple
match of tow steeped in a mixture of powder full of sulphur and
aquavitae, which creeps little by little with its fire to every part
which it has to set alight, one after another, until it has kindled
the whole. Now, as I have said, the things represented are various,
but all must have something to do with fire, and must be subject to
its action; and long before this there had been counterfeited the city
of Sodom, with Lot and his daughters flying from it, at another time
Geryon, with Virgil and Dante on his back, according as Dante himself
relates in the _Inferno_, and even earlier Orpheus bringing Eurydice
with him from those infernal regions, with many other inventions. And
his Excellency ordained that the work should not be given to any of
the puppet-painters, who for many years past had made a thousand
absurdities in the girandole, but that an excellent master should
produce a work that might have in it something of the good; wherefore
the charge of this was given to Tribolo, who, with the ingenuity and
art wherewith he had executed all his other works, made one in the
form of a very beautiful octagonal temple, rising with its ornaments
to the total height of twenty braccia. This temple he represented as
the Temple of Peace, placing on the summit an image of Peace, who was
setting fire to a great pile of arms which she had at her feet; and
these arms, the statue of Peace, and all the other figures that made
this structure one of great beauty, were made of pasteboard, clay, and
cloth steeped in glue, put together with extraordinary art. They were,
I say, of these materials, to the end that the whole work might be the
lighter, since it was to be suspended at a great height from the
ground by a double rope that crossed the Piazza high in the air. It is
true, indeed, that the fireworks having been placed in it too thickly,
and the fuses of tow being too near one to another, when they were set
alight, such was the fury of the conflagration, and so great and so
violent the blaze, that everything caught fire all at once, and was
burned in a flash, whereas it should have continued to burn for an
hour at least; and what was worse, the fire seizing on the woodwork
and on all that should have been preserved, the ropes and every other
thing were consumed in a moment, which was no small loss, and gave
little pleasure to the people. But with regard to workmanship, it was
more beautiful than any other girandola that had ever been made up to
that time.
The Duke, then, resolving to erect the Loggia of the Mercato Nuovo for
the convenience of his citizens and merchants, did not wish to lay a
greater burden than he could bear on Tribolo, who, as chief engineer
to the Capitani di Parte and the commissioners of the rivers and the
sewers of the city, was always riding through the Florentine
dominions, engaged in bringing back to their proper beds many rivers
that did damage by breaking away from them, in repairing bridges, and
in other suchlike works; and he gave the charge of this enterprise to
Tasso, at the advice of the above-mentioned Messer Pier Francesco, his
major-domo, in order to change that Tasso from a carpenter into an
architect. This was certainly against the wishes of Tribolo, although
he did not show it, and even acted as the close friend of Tasso; and a
proof that this is true is that Tribolo perceived many errors in
Tasso's model, but, so it is believed, would by no means tell him of
them. Such an error, for example, was that of the capitals of the
columns that are beside the pilasters, whereby, the columns not
leaving enough space, when everything had been drawn up, and the
capitals had to be set into position, the corona above those capitals
would not go in, so that it was found necessary to cut away so much
that the order of the architecture was ruined; besides many other
errors, of which there is no need to speak. For the above-named Messer
Pier Francesco the same Tasso executed the door of the Church of S.
Romolo, and a window with knee-shaped brackets on the Piazza del Duca,
in an order of his own, substituting capitals for bases, and doing so
many other things without measure or order, that it might have been
said that the German Order had begun to return to life in Tuscany by
means of this man; to say nothing of the works that he did in the
Palace in the way of staircases and apartments, which the Duke has
been obliged to have destroyed, because they had no sort of order,
measure, or proportion, and were, on the contrary, all shapeless, out
of square, and without the least convenience or grace. All these
things were not done without some responsibility falling on Tribolo,
who, having considerable knowledge in such matters, should not, so it
seemed, have allowed his Prince to throw away his money and to do him
such an affront to his face; and, what was even more serious, he
should not have permitted such things to Tasso, who was his friend.
Well did men of judgment recognize the presumption and madness of the
one in seeking to exercise an art of which he knew nothing, and the
dissimulation of the other, who declared that he was pleased with that
which he certainly knew to be bad; and of this a proof may be found in
the works that Giorgio Vasari has had to pull down in the Palace, to
the loss of the Duke and the great shame of those men.
But the same thing happened to Tribolo as to Tasso, in that, even as
Tasso abandoned wood-carving, a craft in which he had no equal, but
never became a good architect, and thus won little honour by deserting
an art in which he was very able, and applying himself to another of
which he knew not one scrap, so Tribolo, abandoning sculpture, in
which it may be said with truth that he was most excellent and caused
everyone to marvel, and setting himself to attempt to straighten out
rivers, ceased to win honour by pursuing the one, while the other
brought him blame and loss rather than honour and profit. For he did
not succeed in his tinkering with rivers, and he made many enemies,
particularly in the district of Prato, on account of the Bisenzio, and
in many places in the Val di Nievole.
Duke Cosimo having then bought the Palace of the Pitti, of which there
has been an account in another place, and his Excellency desiring to
adorn it with gardens, groves, fountains, fish-ponds, and other
suchlike things, Tribolo executed all the distribution of the hill in
the manner in which it still remains, accommodating everything in its
proper place with beautiful judgment, although various things in many
parts of the garden have since been changed. Of this Pitti Palace,
which is the most beautiful in Europe, mention will be made in another
place with a more suitable occasion.
After these things, Tribolo was sent by his Excellency to the island
of Elba, not only that he might see the city and port that the Duke
had caused to be built there, but also that he might make arrangements
for the transport of a round piece of granite, twelve braccia in
diameter, from which was to be made a tazza for the great lawn of the
Pitti Palace, which might receive the water of the principal fountain.
Tribolo, therefore, went thither and caused a boat to be made on
purpose for transporting the tazza, and then, after giving the
stone-cutters directions for the transportation, he returned to
Florence; where he had no sooner arrived, than he found the whole
country full of murmurings and maledictions against him, since about
that time floods and inundations had done infinite havoc in the
neighbourhood of those rivers that he had patched up, although it was,
perhaps, not altogether through his fault that this had happened.
However that may have been, whether it was the malignity of some of
his assistants, or perchance envy, or that the accusation was indeed
true, the blame for all that damage was laid on Tribolo, who, being a
man of no great spirit, and rather wanting in resolution than
otherwise, and doubting that the malice of some enemy might make him
lose the favour of the Duke, was in a state of great despondency,
when, being of a feeble habit of body, on the 20th of August in the
year 1550, there came upon him a most violent fever. At that time
Giorgio Vasari was in Florence, for the purpose of having sent to Rome
the marbles for the tombs that Pope Julius III caused to be erected in
S. Pietro a Montorio; and he, as one who sincerely esteemed the
talents of Tribolo, visited and comforted him, beseeching him that he
should think of nothing save his health, and that, when cured, he
should return to finish the work of Castello, letting the rivers go
their own way, for they were more likely to drown his fame than to
bring him any profit or honour. This, which he promised to attempt to
do, he would, I believe, have done at all costs, if he had not been
prevented by death, which closed his eyes on the 7th of September in
the same year. And so the works of Castello, begun and carried well
forward by him, remained unfinished; for although some work has been
done there since his day, now in one part and now in another,
nevertheless they have never been pursued with the diligence and
resolution that were shown when Tribolo was alive and when the Lord
Duke was hot in the undertaking. Of a truth, he who does not press
great works forward while those who are having them done are spending
money willingly and devoting their best attention to them, brings it
about that those works are put on one side and left unfinished, which
zeal and solicitude could have carried to perfection. And thus, by the
negligence of the workers, the world is left without its adornment,
and they without their honour and fame, for the reason that it rarely
happens, as it did to this work of Castello, that on the death of the
first master he who succeeds to his place is willing to finish it
according to his design and model with that modesty with which Giorgio
Vasari, at the commission of the Duke, has caused the great fish-pond
of Castello to be finished after the directions of Tribolo, even as he
will do with the other things according as his Excellency may desire
from time to time to have them done.
Tribolo lived sixty-five years, and was interred by the Company of the
Scalzo in their place of burial. He left behind him a son called
Raffaello, who has not taken up art, and two daughters, one of whom is
the wife of David, Tribolo's assistant in building all the works at
Castello, who, being a man of judgment and capable in such matters, is
now employed on the aqueducts of Florence, Pisa, and all the other
places in the dominion, according as it may please his Excellency.
PIERINO (PIERO) DA VINCI
LIFE OF PIERINO (PIERO) DA VINCI
SCULPTOR
Although those men are generally the most celebrated who have executed
some work excellently well, nevertheless, if the works already
accomplished by any man foreshadow those that he did not achieve as
likely to have been numerous and much more rare, if some accident,
unforeseen and out of the common use, had not happened to interrupt
him, it is certain that such a man, wherever there may be one willing
to be just in his appreciation of the talent of another, will be
rightly extolled and celebrated both on the one count and on the
other, and as much for what he would have done as for what he did. The
sculptor Vinci, therefore, should not suffer on account of the short
duration of his life, or be robbed thereby of the praise due to him
from the judgment of those who shall come after us, considering that
he was only in the first bloom both of his life and of his studies at
the time when he produced and gave to the world that which everyone
admires, and was like to bring forth fruits in greater abundance, if a
hostile tempest had not destroyed both the fruits and the tree.
I remember having said in another place that in the township of Vinci,
in the lower Valdarno, there lived Ser Piero, the father of Leonardo
da Vinci, most famous of painters. To this Ser Piero, after Leonardo,
there was born, as his youngest son, Bartolommeo, who, living at Vinci
and attaining to manhood, took for his wife one of the first maidens
of that township. Bartolommeo was desirous of having a male child, and
spoke very often to his wife of the greatness of the genius with which
his brother Leonardo had been endowed, praying God that He should make
her worthy that from her there might be born in his house another
Leonardo, the first being now dead. In a short time, therefore,
according to his desire, there was born to him a gracious boy, to whom
he wished to give the name of Leonardo; but, being advised by his
relatives to revive the memory of his father, he gave him the name of
Piero. Having come to the age of three years, the boy had a most
beautiful countenance, with curly locks, and showed great grace in
every movement, with a quickness of intelligence that was marvellous;
insomuch that Maestro Giuliano del Carmine, an excellent astrologer,
and with him a priest devoted to chiromancy, who were both close
friends of Bartolommeo, having arrived in Vinci and lodged in
Bartolommeo's house, looking at the forehead and hand of the boy,
revealed to the father, both the astrologer and the chiromancer
together, the greatness of his genius, and predicted that in a short
time he would make extraordinary proficience in the mercurial arts,
but that his life would also be very short. And only too true was
their prophecy, for both in the one part and in the other (when one
would have sufficed), in his life as well as in his art, it needs must
be fulfilled.
Then, continuing to grow, Piero had his father as his master in
letters, but of himself, without any master, giving his attention to
drawing and to making various little puppets in clay, he showed that
the divine inclination of his nature recognized by the astrologer and
the chiromancer was already awakening and beginning to work in him. By
reason of which Bartolommeo judged that his prayer had been heard by
God; and, believing that his brother had been restored to him in his
son, he began to think of removing Piero from Vinci and taking him to
Florence. Having then done this without delay, he placed Piero, who
was now twelve years of age, with Bandinelli in Florence, flattering
himself that Baccio, having been once the friend of Leonardo, would
take notice of the boy and teach him with diligence; besides which, it
seemed to him that Piero delighted more in sculpture than in painting.
But afterwards, coming very often to Florence, he recognized that
Bandinelli was not answering with deeds to his expectations, and was
not taking pains with the boy or showing interest in him, although he
saw him to be willing to learn. For which reason Bartolommeo took him
away from Bandinelli, and entrusted him to Tribolo, who appeared to
him to make more effort to help those who were seeking to learn,
besides giving more attention to the studies of art and bearing even
greater affection to the memory of Leonardo.
Tribolo was executing some fountains at Castello, the villa of his
Excellency; and thereupon Piero, beginning once more his customary
drawing, through having there the competition of the other young men
whom Tribolo kept about him, set himself with great ardour of spirit
to study day and night, being spurred by his nature, which was
desirous of excellence and honour, and being even more kindled by the
example of the others like himself whom he saw constantly around him.
Wherefore in a few months he made such progress, that it was a marvel
to everyone; and, having begun to gain some experience with the
chisels, he sought to see whether his hand and his tools would obey in
practice the thoughts within him and the designs formed in his brain.
Tribolo, perceiving his readiness, and having had a water-basin of
stone made at that very time for Cristofano Rinieri, gave to Piero a
small piece of marble, from which he was to make for that water-basin
a boy that should spurt forth water from the private part. Piero,
taking the marble with great gladness, first made a little model of
clay, and then executed the work with so much grace, that Tribolo and
the others ventured the opinion that he would become one of those who
are counted as rare in that art. Tribolo then gave him a Ducal
Mazzocchio[3] to make in stone, to be placed over an escutcheon with
the Medici balls, for Messer Pier Francesco Riccio, the major-domo of
the Duke; and he made it with two children with their legs intertwined
together, who are holding the Mazzocchio in their hands and placing it
upon the escutcheon, which is fixed over the door of a house that the
major-domo then occupied, opposite to S. Giuliano, near the Priests of
S. Antonio. When this work was seen, all the craftsmen of Florence
formed the same judgment that Tribolo had pronounced before.
[Footnote 3: See note on p. 132, Vol. II.]
After this, he carved a boy squeezing a fish that is pouring water
from its mouth, for the fountains of Castello. And then, Tribolo
having given him a larger piece of marble, Piero made from it two
children who are embracing each other and squeezing fishes, causing
water to spout from their mouths. These children were so graceful in
the heads and in their whole persons, and executed with so beautiful a
manner in the legs, arms, and hair, that already it could be seen that
he would have been able to execute the most difficult work to
perfection. Taking heart, therefore, and buying a piece of grey-stone,
two braccia and a half in length, which he took to his house on the
Canto alla Briga, Piero began to work at it in the evenings, after
returning from his labours, at night, and on feast-days, insomuch that
little by little he brought it to completion. This was a figure of
Bacchus, who had a Satyr at his feet, and with one hand was holding a
cup, while in the other he had a bunch of grapes, and his head was
girt with a crown of grapes; all after a model made by himself in
clay. In this and in his other early works Piero showed a marvellous
facility, which never offends the eye, nor is it in any respect
disturbing to him who beholds it. This Bacchus, when finished, was
bought by Bongianni Capponi, and his nephew Lodovico Capponi now has
it in a courtyard in his house.
The while that Piero was executing these works, few persons as yet
knew that he was the nephew of Leonardo da Vinci; but his labours
making him well known and renowned, by this means his parentage and
his birth were likewise revealed. Wherefore ever afterwards, both from
his connection with his uncle and from his own happy genius, wherein
he resembled that great man, he was called by everyone not Piero, but
Vinci.
Now Vinci, while occupied in this manner, had often heard various
persons speaking of the things connected with the arts to be seen in
Rome, and extolling them, as is always done by everyone; wherefore a
great desire had been kindled in him to see them, hoping to be able to
derive profit by beholding not only the works of the ancients, but
also those of Michelagnolo, and even the master himself, who was then
alive and residing in Rome. He went thither, therefore, in company
with some friends; but after seeing Rome and all that he wished, he
returned to Florence, having reflected judiciously that the things of
Rome were as yet too profound for him, and should be studied and
imitated not so early in his career, but after a greater acquaintance
with art.
At that time Tribolo had finished a model for the shaft of the
fountain in the labyrinth, in which are some Satyrs in low-relief,
four masks in half-relief, and four little boys in the round, who are
seated upon certain caulicoles. Vinci having then returned, Tribolo
gave him this shaft to do, and he executed and finished it, making in
it some delicate designs not employed by any other but himself, which
greatly pleased all who saw them. Then, having had the whole marble
tazza of that fountain finished, Tribolo thought of placing on the
edge of it four children in the round, lying down and playing with
their arms and legs in the water, in various attitudes; and these he
intended to cast in bronze. Vinci, at the commission of Tribolo, made
them of clay, and they were afterwards cast in bronze by Zanobi
Lastricati, a sculptor and a man very experienced in matters of
casting; and they were placed not long since around the fountain,
where they make a most beautiful effect.
There was in daily intercourse with Tribolo one Luca Martini, the
proveditor at that time for the building of the Mercato Nuovo, who,
praising highly the excellence in art and the fine character of Vinci,
and desiring to help him, provided him with a piece of marble
two-thirds of a braccio in height and one and a quarter in length.
Vinci, taking the marble, made with it a Christ being scourged at the
Column, in which the rules of low-relief and of design may be seen to
have been well observed; and in truth it made everyone marvel,
considering that he had not yet reached the age of seventeen, and had
made in five years of study that proficience in art which others do
not achieve save after length of life and great experience of many
things.