performances by no means corresponded to his promises and his duty
towards those Pontiffs, for he used little diligence in the figures
and scenes, and left them badly finished and full of defects, being
more solicitous about drawing his money than about working at the
marble. Now his patrons became aware of Baccio's procedure, and
repented of what they had done; but the two largest pieces of marble
remained, those for the two statues that were still to be executed,
one of Leo seated and the other of Clement, and these they ordered him
to finish, beseeching him that he should do better in them. But
Baccio, having already drawn all the money, entered into negotiations
with Messer Giovan Battista da Ricasoli, Bishop of Cortona, who was in
Rome on business of Duke Cosimo's, to depart from Rome and go to
Florence in order to serve Cosimo in the matter of the fountains of
his villa of Castello and the tomb of his father, Signor Giovanni.
The Duke having answered that Baccio should come, he set off for
Florence without a word, leaving the work of the tombs unfinished and
the statues in the hands of two assistants. The Cardinals, hearing of
this, allotted those two statues of the Popes, which still remained to
be finished, to two sculptors, one of whom was Raffaello da Montelupo,
who received the statue of Pope Leo, and the other Giovanni di Baccio,
to whom was given the statue of Clement. They then gave orders that
the masonry and all that was prepared should be put together, and the
work was erected; but the statues and scenes were in many parts
neither pumiced nor polished, so that they brought Baccio more
discredit than fame.
Arriving in Florence, Baccio found that the Duke had sent the sculptor
Tribolo to Carrara to quarry the marble for the fountains of Castello
and the tomb of Signor Giovanni; and he so wrought upon the Duke that
he wrested the tomb of Signor Giovanni from the hands of Tribolo,
demonstrating to his Excellency that the marbles for such a work were
already in great measure in Florence. Thus, little by little, he
penetrated into the confidence of the Duke, insomuch that both for
this reason and for his arrogance everyone was afraid of him. He then
proposed to the Duke that the tomb of Signor Giovanni should be
erected in the Chapel of the Neroni, a narrow, confined, and mean
place, in S. Lorenzo, being too ignorant or not wishing to suggest
that for so great a Prince it was proper that a new chapel should be
built on purpose. He also prevailed on the Duke to demand from
Michelagnolo, on Baccio's behalf, many pieces of marble that he had in
Florence; and when the Duke had obtained them from Michelagnolo, and
Baccio from the Duke, among those marbles being some blocked out
figures and a statue carried well on towards completion by
Michelagnolo, Bandinelli, taking them all over, hacked and broke to
pieces everything that he could find, thinking that by so doing he was
avenging himself on Michelagnolo and causing him displeasure. He
found, moreover, in the same room in S. Lorenzo wherein Michelagnolo
worked, two statues in one block of marble, representing Hercules
crushing Antaeus, which the Duke was having executed by the sculptor
Fra Giovanni Agnolo. These were well advanced; but Baccio, saying to
the Duke that the friar had spoilt that marble, broke it into many
pieces.
In the end, he constructed all the base of the tomb, which is an
isolated pedestal about four braccia on every side, and has at the
foot a socle with a moulding in the manner of a base, which goes right
round, and with a fillet at the top, such as is generally made for
pedestals; and above this a cyma three-quarters of a braccio in
height, which goes inwards in a concave curve, inverted, after the
manner of a frieze, on which are carved some horse's skulls bound one
to another with draperies; and above the whole was to be a smaller
pedestal, with a seated statue of four braccia and a half, armed in
the ancient fashion, and holding in the hand the baton of a
condottiere captain of armies, which was to represent the person of
the invincible Signor Giovanni de' Medici. This statue was begun by
him from a block of marble, and carried well on, but never finished or
placed on the base built for it. It is true that on the front of that
base he finished entirely a scene of marble in half-relief, with
figures about two braccia high, in which he represented Signor
Giovanni seated, to whom are being brought many prisoners, soldiers,
women with dishevelled hair, and nude figures, but all without
invention and without revealing any feeling. At the end of the scene,
indeed, there is a figure with a pig on the shoulder, which is said to
have been made by Baccio to represent Messer Baldassarre da Pescia, in
derision; for Baccio looked upon him as his enemy, since about this
time Messer Baldassarre, as has been related above, had allotted the
two statues of Leo and Clement to other sculptors, and, moreover, had
so gone to work in Rome that Baccio had perforce to restore at great
inconvenience the money that he had received beyond his due for those
statues and figures.
During this time Baccio had given his attention to nothing else but
demonstrating to Duke Cosimo how much the glory of the ancients had
lived through their statues and buildings, saying that his Excellency
should seek to obtain in the same way immortality for himself and his
actions in the ages to come. Then, after he had brought the tomb of
Signor Giovanni near completion, he set about planning to make the
Duke begin some great and costly work, which might take a very long
time. Duke Cosimo had ceased to inhabit the Palace of the Medici, and
had returned with his Court to live in the Palace in the Piazza, which
was formerly occupied by the Signoria; and this he was daily
rearranging and adorning. Now he had said to Baccio that he had a
desire to make a public audience-chamber, both for the foreign
Ambassadors and for his citizens and the subjects of the State; and
Baccio, with Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo, went about thinking how to
suggest to him that he should erect an ornamental work of Fossato
stone and marble, thirty-eight braccia in width and eighteen in
height. This ornamental work, they proposed, should serve as the
audience-chamber, and should be in the Great Hall of the Palace, at
that end which looks towards the north. The audience-chamber was to
have a space of fourteen braccia in depth, the ascent to which was to
be by seven great steps; and it was to be closed in front by a
balustrade, excepting the entrance in the middle. At the end of the
hall were to be three great arches, two of which were to serve for
windows, being divided up by columns, four to each, two of Fossato
stone and two of marble; and above this was to curve a round arch with
a frieze of brackets, which were to form on the outer side the
ornament of the facade of the Palace, and on the inner side to adorn
in the same manner the facade of the hall. The arch in the middle,
forming not a window, but a niche, was to be accompanied by two other
similar niches, which were to be at the ends of the audience-chamber,
one on the east and the other on the west, and adorned with four round
Corinthian columns, which were to be ten braccia high and to form a
projection at the ends. In the central facade were to be four
pilasters, which were to serve as supports between one arch and
another to the architrave, frieze, and cornice running right round
both above the arches and above the columns. These pilasters were to
have between one and another a space of about three braccia, and in
each of these spaces was to be a niche four braccia and a half in
height, to contain statues, by way of accompaniment to the great niche
in the middle of the facade and the two at the sides; in each of which
niches Baccio wished to place three statues.
Baccio and Giuliano had in mind, in addition to the ornament of the
inner facade, another larger ornament of extraordinary cost and
grandeur for the outer facade. The hall being awry and out of square,
this ornament was to reduce that outer side to a square form; and
there was to be a projection of six braccia right round the walls of
the Palazzo Vecchio, with a range of columns fourteen braccia high
supporting other columns, between which were to be arches, forming a
loggia below, right round the Palace, where there are the Ringhiera
and the Giants. Above this, again, was to be another range of
pilasters, with arches between them in the same manner, running all
the way round the windows of the Palazzo Vecchio, so as to make a
facade right round the Palace; and above these pilasters was to be yet
another range of arches and pilasters, after the manner of a theatre,
with the battlements of that Palace, finally, forming a cornice to the
whole structure.
Knowing that this was a work of vast expense, Baccio and Giuliano
consulted together that they should not reveal their conception to the
Duke, save only with regard to the ornament of the audience-chamber
within the hall, and that of the facade of Fossato stone on the side
towards the Piazza, stretching to the length of twenty-four braccia,
which is the breadth of the hall. Designs and plans of this work were
made by Giuliano, and with these in his hand Baccio spoke to the Duke,
to whom he pointed out that in the large niches at the sides he wished
to place statues of marble four braccia high, seated on
pedestals--namely, Leo X in the act of restoring peace to Italy, and
Clement VII crowning Charles V, with two statues in smaller niches
within the large ones, on either side of the Popes, which should
represent the virtues practised and put into action by them. For the
niches four braccia high between the pilasters, in the central facade,
he wished to make upright statues of Signor Giovanni, Duke Alessandro,
and Duke Cosimo, together with many decorations of various fantasies
in carving, and a pavement all of variegated marbles of different
colours.
This ornament much pleased the Duke, thinking that with this
opportunity it should be possible in time to bring to completion, as
has since been done, the body of that hall, with the rest of the
decorations and the ceiling, in order to make it the most beautiful
hall in Italy. And so great was his Excellency's desire that this work
should be done, that he assigned for its execution such a sum of money
as Baccio wished and demanded every week. A beginning was made with
the quarrying and cutting of the Fossato stone, in order to make the
ornamentation in the form of the base, columns, and cornices; and
Baccio required that all should be done and carried to completion by
the stone-cutters of the Office of Works of S. Maria del Fiore. This
work was certainly executed by those masters with great diligence; and
if Baccio and Giuliano had urged it on, they would have finished and
built in all the ornaments of stone very quickly. But Baccio gave his
attention to nothing save to having the statues blocked out, finishing
few of them entirely, and to drawing his salary, which the Duke gave
him every month, besides paying for his assistants and meeting every
sort of expense that he incurred in the work, and giving him five
hundred crowns for one of the statues finished by him in marble;
wherefore the end of this work was never in sight.
Even so, if Baccio and Giuliano, being engaged on a work of such
importance, had brought the head of that hall into square, as they
could have done, instead of putting right only half of the eight
braccia by which it was awry, and leaving several parts badly
proportioned, such as the central niche and the two large ones at the
sides, which are squat, and the members of the cornices, which are too
slight for so great a body; if, as they might have done, they had gone
higher with the columns, thus giving greater grandeur, a better
manner, and more invention to that work; and if, also, they had
brought the uppermost cornice into touch with the level of the
original old ceiling above, they would have shown more art and
judgment, nor would all that labour have been spent in vain and wasted
so thoughtlessly, as has since been evident to those to whom, as will
be related, it has fallen to put it right and finish it. For, in spite
of all the pains and thought afterwards devoted to it, there are many
defects and errors in the door of entrance and in the relation of the
niches in the side-walls, in which it has since been seen to be
necessary to change the form of many parts, although it has never yet
been found possible, without demolishing the whole, to correct the
divergence from the square or to prevent this from being revealed in
the pavement and the ceiling. It is true that in the manner in which
they arranged it, even as it now stands, there is proof of great
craftsmanship and pains, and it deserves no little praise for the many
stones worked with the bevel-square, which slant away obliquely by
reason of the hall being awry; and as for diligence and excellence in
the working, laying, and joining together of the stones, nothing
better could be seen or done. But the whole work would have succeeded
much better if Baccio, who never held architecture in any account, had
availed himself of some judgment more able than that of Giuliano, who,
although he was a good master in wood and had some knowledge of
architecture, was yet not the sort of man to be suitable for such a
work as that was, as experience has proved. For this reason the work
was pursued over a period of many years, without much more than half
being built. Baccio finished and placed in the smaller niches the
statue of Signor Giovanni and that of Duke Alessandro, both in the
principal facade, and on a pedestal of bricks in the great niche the
statue of Pope Clement; and he also brought to completion the statue
of Duke Cosimo. In the last he took no little pains with the head, but
for all this the Duke and the gentlemen of the Court said that it did
not resemble him in the least. Wherefore Baccio, having already made
one of marble, which is now in one of the upper apartments in the same
Palace, and which looked very well and was the best head that he ever
made, defended himself and sought to cover up the defects and
worthlessness of the new head with the excellence of the old. However,
hearing that head censured by everyone, one day in a rage he knocked
it off, with the intention of making another and fixing it in its
place; but in the end he never made it at all. It was a custom of
Baccio's to add pieces of marble both small and large to the statues
that he executed, feeling no annoyance in doing this, and making light
of it. He did this with one of the heads of Cerberus in the group of
Orpheus; in the S. Peter that is in S. Maria del Fiore he let in a
piece of drapery; in the case of the Giant of the Piazza, as may be
seen, he joined two pieces--a shoulder and a leg--to the Cacus, and
in many other works he did the same, holding to such ways as generally
damn a sculptor completely.
Having finished these statues, he set his hand to the statue of Pope
Leo for this work, and carried it well forward. Then, perceiving that
the work was proving very long, that he was now never likely to attain
to the completion of his original design for the facades right round
the Palace, that a great sum of money had been spent and much time
consumed, and that for all this the work was not half finished and
gained little approval from the people, he set about thinking of some
new fantasy, and began to attempt to remove from the Duke's mind the
thought of the Palace, believing that his Excellency also was weary of
that work. Thus, then, having made enemies of the proveditors and of
all the stone-cutters in the Office of Works of S. Maria del Fiore,
which was under his authority, while the statues that were destined
for the audience-chamber were, after his fashion, some only blocked
out and others finished and placed in position, and the ornamentation
in great part built up, wishing to conceal the many defects that were
in the work and little by little to abandon it, he suggested to the
Duke that the Wardens of Works of S. Maria del Fiore were throwing
away his money and no longer doing anything of any importance. He said
that he had therefore thought that his Excellency would do well to
divert all that useless expenditure of the Office of Works into making
the octagonal choir of the church and the ornaments of the altar, the
steps, the daises of the Duke and the magistrates, and the stalls in
the choir for the canons, chaplains, and clerks, according as was
proper for so honourable a church. Of this choir Filippo di Ser
Brunellesco had left the model in that simple framework of wood which
previously served as the choir in the church, intending in time to
have it executed in marble, in the same form, but more ornate. Baccio
reflected, besides the considerations mentioned above, that in this
choir he would have occasion to make many statues and scenes in marble
and in bronze for the high-altar and all around the choir, and also
for two pulpits of marble that were to be in the choir, and that the
base of the outer side of the eight faces might be adorned with many
scenes in bronze let into the marble ornamentation. Above this he
thought to place a range of columns and pilasters to support the
cornice right round, and four arches distributed according to the
cross of the church; of which arches one was to form the principal
entrance, opposite to another rising above the high-altar, and the two
others were to be at the sides, one on the right hand and another on
the left, and below these last two were to be placed the pulpits. Over
the cornice was to be a range of balusters, curving right round above
the eight sides, and over the balusters a garland of candelabra, in
order, as it were, to crown the choir with lights according to the
seasons, as had always been the custom while the wooden model of
Brunelleschi was there.
[Illustration: RELIEFS FROM THE CHOIR SCREEN
(_After =Baccio Bandinelli=. Florence: Duomo_)
_Alinari_]
Pointing out all this to the Duke, Baccio said that his Excellency,
with the revenues of the Office of Works--namely, of S. Maria del
Fiore and of its Wardens--and with that which his liberality might
add, in a short time could adorn that temple and give great grandeur
and magnificence to the same, and consequently to the whole city, of
which it was the principal temple, and would leave an everlasting and
honourable memorial of himself in such a structure; and besides all
this, he said, his Excellency would be giving him an opportunity of
exerting his powers and of making many good and beautiful works, and
also, by displaying his ability, of acquiring for himself name and
fame with posterity, which should be pleasing to his Excellency, since
he was his servant and had been brought up by the house of the Medici.
With these designs and these words Baccio so moved the Duke, that,
consenting that such a structure should be erected, his Excellency
commissioned him to make a model of the whole choir. Departing from
the Duke, then, Baccio went to his architect, Giuliano di Baccio
d'Agnolo, and discussed the whole matter with him; and, after they had
gone to the place and examined everything with diligence, they
resolved not to depart from the form of Filippo's model, but to follow
it, adding only other ornaments in the shape of columns and
projections, and enriching it as much as they could while preserving
the original design and form. But it is not the number of parts and
ornaments that renders a fabric rich and beautiful, but their
excellence, however few they may be, provided also that they are set
in their proper places and arranged together with due proportion; it
is these that give pleasure and are admired, and, having been executed
with judgment by the craftsman, afterwards receive praise from all
others. This Giuliano and Baccio do not seem to have considered or
observed, for they chose a subject involving much labour and endless
pains, but wanting in grace, as experience has proved.
The design of Giuliano, as may be seen, was to place at the corners of
all the eight sides pilasters bent round the angles, the whole work
being composed in the Ionic Order; and these pilasters, since in the
ground-plan they were made, with all the rest of the work, to diminish
towards the centre of the choir and were not even, necessarily had to
be broad on the outer side and narrow on the inner, which is a breach
of proportionate measurement. And since each pilaster was bent
according to the inner angles of the eight sides, the extension-lines
towards the centre so diminished it that the two columns that were one
on either side of the pilaster at the corner caused it to appear too
slender, and produced an ungraceful effect both in it and in the whole
work, both on the outer side and likewise on the inner, although the
measurements there are correct. Giuliano also made the model of the
whole altar, which stood at a distance of one braccio and a half from
the ornament of the choir. For the upper part of this Baccio
afterwards made in wax a Christ lying dead, with two Angels, one of
whom was holding His right arm and supporting His head on one knee,
and the other was holding the Mysteries of the Passion; which statue
of Christ occupied almost the whole altar, so that there would
scarcely have been room to celebrate Mass, and Baccio proposed to make
this statue about four braccia and a half in length. He made, also, a
projection in the form of a pedestal behind the altar, attached to it
in the centre, with a seat upon which he afterwards placed a seated
figure of God the Father, six braccia high and giving the benediction,
and accompanied by two other Angels, each four braccia high, kneeling
at the extreme corners of the predella of the altar, on the level on
which rested the feet of God the Father. This predella was more than a
braccio in height, and on it were many stories of the Passion of Jesus
Christ, which were all to be in bronze, and on the corners of the
predella were the Angels mentioned above, both kneeling and each
holding in the hands a candelabrum; which candelabra of the Angels
served to accompany eight large candelabra placed between the Angels,
and three braccia and a half in height, which adorned that altar; and
God the Father was in the midst of them all. Behind God the Father was
left a space of half a braccio, in order that there might be room to
ascend to kindle the lights.
Under the arch that stood opposite to the principal entrance of the
choir, on the base that ran right round, on the outer side, Baccio had
placed, directly under the centre of that arch, the Tree of the Fall,
round the trunk of which was wound the Ancient Serpent with a human
face, and two nude figures were about the Tree, one being Adam and the
other Eve. On the outer side of the choir, to which those figures had
their faces turned, there ran lengthways along the base a space about
three braccia long, which was to contain the story of their Creation,
either in marble or in bronze; and this was to be pursued along the
faces of the base of the whole work, to the number of twenty-one
stories, all from the Old Testament. And for the further enrichment of
this base he had made for each of the socles upon which stood the
columns and pilasters, a figure of some Prophet, either draped or
nude, to be afterwards executed in marble--a great work, truly, and a
marvellous opportunity, likely to reveal all the art and genius of a
perfect master, whose memory should never be extinguished by any lapse
of time. This model was shown to the Duke, and also a double series of
designs made by Baccio, which, both from their variety and their
number, and likewise from their beauty--for the reason that Baccio
worked boldly in wax and drew very well--pleased his Excellency, and
he ordained that the masonry-work should be straightway taken in hand,
devoting to it all the expenditure administered by the Office of
Works, and giving orders that a great quantity of marble should be
brought from Carrara.