his daughter-in-law, seven years after the death of Baccio, caused the
audience-chamber in the Great Hall, begun by Baccio, of which we have
spoken above, to be finished; and he chose that the head of this work
of completion should be Giorgio Vasari, who has sought with all
diligence to put right the many defects that would have been in it if
it had been continued and finished after the original design followed
in the beginning by Baccio. Thus that imperfect work has now been
carried with the help of God to completion, and is enriched on its
side faces by the addition of niches and pilasters, and statues set in
their places. Moreover, since it was laid out awry and out of square,
we have taken pains to make it even in so far as has been possible,
and have raised it considerably with a corridor of Tuscan columns at
the top; and as for the statue of Leo begun by Baccio, his pupil
Vincenzio de' Rossi has finished it. Besides this, that work has been
adorned with friezes full of stucco-work, with many figures large and
small, and with devices and other ornaments of various kinds, and
under the niches and in the partitions of the vaulting have been made
many and various designs in stucco and many beautiful inventions in
carving; all which things have enriched the work in such a manner,
that it has changed its form and has gained not a little in beauty and
grace. For whereas, according to the first design, the ceiling of the
Hall being twenty-one braccia above the floor, the audience-chamber
did not rise higher than eighteen braccia, so that between it and the
old ceiling there was a space of only three braccia; now, after our
design, the ceiling of the Hall has been raised so much that it has
risen twelve braccia above the old ceiling and fifteen above the
audience-chamber of Baccio and Giuliano, so that the ceiling is now
thirty-three braccia above the floor of the Hall. And it certainly
showed great spirit in his Excellency, that he should resolve to cause
to be finished in the space of five months for the above-named
nuptials the whole of a work of which more than a third still remained
to do, although it had taken more than fifteen years to arrive at the
condition in which it was at that time; so eager was he to carry it to
completion. But it was not only Baccio's work that his Excellency
caused to be completely finished, but also all the rest of what
Giorgio Vasari had designed; beginning again from the base that runs
over the whole of that work, with a border of balusters in the open
spaces, which forms a corridor that passes above the work in the Hall,
and commands a view on the outer side of the Piazza and on the inner
side of the whole Hall. Thus the Princes and other lords will be able
to see, without being seen, all the festivals that may be held there,
with much pleasure and convenience for themselves, and then to retire
to their apartments, passing by the private and public staircases
through all the rooms in the Palace. Nevertheless, to many it has
caused dissatisfaction that in a work of such beauty and grandeur that
structure was not made square, and many would have liked to have it
pulled down and then rebuilt true to square. But it has been judged to
be better to continue the work in that way, in order not to appear
presumptuous and malign towards Baccio, and also because otherwise we
would have seemed not to have the power to correct the errors and
defects found by us but committed by others.
But, returning to Baccio, we must say that his abilities were always
recognized during his lifetime, yet will be recognized and regretted
much more now that he is dead. And even more would he have been
acknowledged for what he was, when alive, and beloved, if he had been
so favoured by nature as to be more amiable and more courteous,
because his being the contrary, and very rough with his tongue, robbed
him of the goodwill of other persons, obscured his talents, and
brought it about that his works were regarded with ill will and a
prejudiced eye, and therefore could never please anyone. And although
he served one nobleman after another, and was enabled by his talent to
serve them well, nevertheless he rendered his services with such bad
grace, that there was no one who felt grateful to him for them.
Moreover, his always decrying and maligning the works of others
brought it about that no one could endure him, and, whenever another
was able to pay him back in his own coin, it was returned to him with
interest; and before the magistrates he spoke all manner of evil
without scruple about the other citizens, and received from them as
good as he gave. He brought suits and went to law about everything
with the greatest readiness, living in one long succession of
law-suits, and appearing to triumph in them. But since his drawing, to
which it is evident that he gave his attention more than to any other
thing, was of such a kind and of such excellence that it atones for
his every natural defect and makes him known as a rare master of our
art, we therefore not only count him among the greatest craftsmen, but
also have always paid respect to his works, and have sought not to
destroy but to finish them and do them honour, for the reason that it
appears to us that Baccio was in truth one of those who deserve
honourable praise and everlasting fame.
We have deferred to the end the mention of his family name, because it
was not always the same, but varied, Baccio having himself called now
De' Brandini, and now De' Bandinelli. In his early prints the name De'
Brandini may be seen engraved after that of Baccio; but afterwards he
preferred the name De' Bandinelli, which he retained to the end and
still retains, and he used to say that his ancestors were of the
Bandinelli of Siena, who once removed to Gaiuole, and from Gaiuole to
Florence.
GIULIANO BUGIARDINI
[Illustration: GIULIANO BUGIARDINI: PORTRAIT OF A LADY
(_Florence: Pitti, 140. Panel_)]
LIFE OF GIULIANO BUGIARDINI
PAINTER OF FLORENCE
Before the siege of Florence the population had multiplied in such
great numbers that the widespread suburbs which lay without every
gate, together with the churches, monasteries, and hospitals, formed
as it were another city, inhabited by many honourable persons and by
good craftsmen of every kind, although for the most part they were
less wealthy than those of the city, and lived there with less expense
in the way of customs-dues and the like. In one of these suburbs,
then, without the Porta a Faenza, was born Giuliano Bugiardini, who
lived there, even as his ancestors had done, until the year 1529, when
all the suburbs were pulled down. But before that, when still a mere
lad, he began his studies in the garden of the Medici on the Piazza di
S. Marco, in which, attending to the study of art under the sculptor
Bertoldo, he formed such strait friendship and intimacy with
Michelagnolo Buonarroti, that he was much beloved by Buonarroti ever
afterwards; which Michelagnolo did not so much because of any depth
that he saw in Giuliano's manner of drawing, as on account of the
extraordinary diligence and love that he showed towards art. There was
in Giuliano, besides this, a certain natural goodness and a sort of
simplicity in his mode of living, free from all envy and malice, which
vastly pleased Buonarroti; nor was there any notable defect in him
save this, that he loved too well the works of his own hand. For,
although all men are wont to err in this respect, Giuliano in truth
passed all due bounds, whatever may have been the reason--either the
great pains and diligence that he put into executing them, or some
other cause. Wherefore Michelagnolo used to call him blessed, since
he appeared to be content with what he knew, and himself unhappy, in
that no work of his ever fully satisfied him.
After Giuliano had studied design for some time in the above-named
garden, he worked, together with Buonarroti and Granacci, under
Domenico Ghirlandajo, at the time when he was painting the chapel in
S. Maria Novella. Then, having made his growth and become a passing
good master, he betook himself to work in company with Mariotto
Albertinelli in Gualfonda; in which place he finished a panel-picture
that is now at the door of entrance of S. Maria Maggiore in Florence,
containing S. Alberto, a Carmelite friar, who has under his feet the
Devil in the form of a woman, a work that was much extolled.
It was the custom in Florence before the siege of 1530, at the burial
of dead persons of good family and noble blood, to carry in front of
the bier a string of pennons fixed round a panel that a porter bore on
his head; which pennons were afterwards left in the church in memory
of the deceased and of his family. Now, when the elder Cosimo Rucellai
died, Bernardo and Palla, his sons, in order to have something new,
thought of having not pennons, but in place of them a quadrangular
banner four braccia wide and five braccia high, with some pennons at
the foot containing the arms of the Rucellai. These men therefore
giving this work to Giuliano to execute, he painted on the body of the
said banner four great figures, executed very well--namely, S. Cosimo,
S. Damiano, S. Peter, and S. Paul, which were truly most beautiful
paintings, and done with more diligence than had ever been shown in
any other work on cloth.
These and other works of Giuliano's having been seen by Mariotto
Albertinelli, he recognized how careful Giuliano was in following the
designs that were put before him, without departing from them by a
hair's breadth, and, since he was preparing in those days to abandon
art, he gave him to finish a panel-picture that Fra Bartolommeo di San
Marco, his friend and companion, had formerly left only designed and
shaded with water-colours on the gesso of the panel, as was his
custom. Giuliano, then, setting his hand to this work, executed it
with supreme diligence and labour, and it was placed at that time in
the Church of S. Gallo, without the gate of that name. The church and
convent were afterwards pulled down on account of the siege, and the
picture was carried into the city and placed in the Priests' Hospital
in the Via di S. Gallo, and then from there into the Convent of S.
Marco, and finally into S. Jacopo tra Fossi on the Canto degli
Alberti, where it stands at the present day on the high-altar. In this
picture is the Dead Christ, with the Magdalene, who is embracing His
feet, and S. John the Evangelist, who is holding His head and
supporting it on one knee. There, likewise, are S. Peter, who is
weeping, and S. Paul, who, stretching out his arms, is contemplating
his Dead Master; and, to tell the truth, Giuliano executed this
picture with so much lovingness and so much consideration and
judgment, that he will be always very highly extolled for it, even as
he was at that time, and that rightly. And after this he finished for
Cristofano Rinieri a picture with the Rape of Dina that had been
likewise left incomplete by the same Fra Bartolommeo; and he painted
another picture like it, which was sent to France.
Not long afterwards, having been drawn to Bologna by certain friends,
he executed some portraits from life, and, for a chapel in the new
choir of S. Francesco, an altar-piece in oils containing Our Lady and
two Saints, which was held at that time in Bologna, from there not
being many masters there, to be a good work and worthy of praise.
Then, having returned to Florence, he painted for I know not what
person five pictures of the life of Our Lady, which are now in the
house of Maestro Andrea Pasquali, physician to his Excellency and a
man of great distinction.
Messer Palla Rucellai having commissioned him to execute an
altar-piece that was to be placed on his altar in S. Maria Novella,
Giuliano began to paint in it the Martyrdom of S. Catharine the
Virgin. Mountains in labour! He had it in hand for twelve years, but
never carried it to completion after all that time, because he had no
invention and knew not how to paint the many various things that had a
part in that martyrdom; and, although he was always racking his brain
as to how those wheels should be made, and how he should paint the
lightning and the fire that consumed them, constantly changing one
day what he had done the day before, in all that time he was never
able to finish it. It is true that in the meantime he executed many
works, and among others, for Messer Francesco Guicciardini--who had
returned from Bologna and was then living in his villa at Montici,
writing his history--a portrait of him, which was a passing good
likeness and pleased him much. He took the portrait, likewise, of
Signora Angela de' Rossi, the sister of the Count of Sansecondo, for
Signor Alessandro Vitelli, her husband, who was then on garrison-duty
in Florence. For Messer Ottaviano de' Medici he painted in a large
picture, copied from one by Fra Sebastiano del Piombo, two full-length
portraits, Pope Clement seated and Fra Niccolo della Magna standing;
and in another picture, likewise, with incredible pains and patience,
he portrayed Pope Clement seated, and before him Bartolommeo Valori,
who is kneeling and speaking to him.
[Illustration: THE MARTYRDOM OF S. CATHARINE
(_After the painting by =Giuliano Bugiardini=. Florence: S. Maria
Novella, Rucellai Chapel_)
_Alinari_]
Next, the above-named Messer Ottaviano de' Medici having besought
Giuliano privately that he should take for him the portrait of
Michelagnolo Buonarroti, he set his hand to it; and, after he had kept
Michelagnolo, who used to take pleasure in his conversation, sitting
for two hours, Giuliano said to him: "Michelagnolo, if you wish to see
yourself, get up and look, for I have now fixed the expression of the
face." Michelagnolo, having risen and looked at the portrait, said to
Giuliano, laughing: "What the devil have you been doing? You have
painted me with one of my eyes up in the temple. Give a little thought
to what you are doing." Hearing this, Giuliano, after standing pensive
for a while and looking many times from the portrait to the living
model, answered in serious earnest: "To me it does not seem so, but
sit you down again, and I shall see a little better from the life
whether it be true." Buonarroti, who knew whence the defect arose and
how small was the judgment of Bugiardini, straightway resumed his
seat, grinning. And Giuliano looked many times now at Michelagnolo and
now at the picture, and then finally, rising to his feet, declared:
"To me it seems that the thing is just as I have drawn it, and that
the life is in no way different." "Well, then," answered Buonarroti,
"it is a natural deformity. Go on, and spare neither brush nor art."
And so Giuliano finished the picture and gave it to Messer
Ottaviano, together with the portrait of Pope Clement by the hand of
Fra Sebastiano, as Buonarroti desired, who had sent to Rome for it.
Giuliano afterwards made for Cardinal Innocenzio Cibo a copy of the
picture in which Raffaello da Urbino had formerly painted portraits of
Pope Leo, Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, and Cardinal de' Rossi; but in
place of Cardinal de' Rossi he painted the head of Cardinal Cibo, in
which he acquitted himself very well, and he executed the whole
picture with great diligence and labour. At that time, likewise, he
took the portrait of Cencio Guasconi, who was then a very beautiful
youth. And after this he painted at the villa of Baccio Valori, at
Olmo a Castello, a tabernacle in fresco, which, although it had not
much design, was well and very carefully executed.
Meanwhile Palla Rucellai was pressing him to finish his altar-piece,
of which mention has been made above, and Giuliano resolved to take
Michelagnolo one day to see it. And so, after he had brought him to
the place where he kept it, and had described to him with what pains
he had executed the lightning-flash, which, coming down from Heaven,
shivers the wheels and kills those who are turning them, and also a
sun, which, bursting from a cloud, delivers S. Catharine from death,
he frankly besought Michelagnolo, who could not keep from laughing as
he heard poor Bugiardini's lamentations, that he should tell him how
to make eight or ten principal figures of soldiers in the foreground
of this altar-piece, drawn up in line after the manner of a guard, and
in the act of flight, some being prostrate, some wounded, and others
dead; for, said Giuliano, he did not know for himself how to
foreshorten them in such a manner that there might be room for them
all in so narrow a space, in the fashion that he had imagined, in
line. Buonarroti, then, having compassion on the poor man and wishing
to oblige him, went up to the picture with a piece of charcoal and
outlined with a few strokes, lightly sketched in, a line of marvellous
nude figures, which, foreshortened in different attitudes, were
falling in various ways, some backward and others forward, with some
wounded or dead, and all executed with that judgment and excellence
that were peculiar to Michelagnolo. This done, he went away with the
thanks of Giuliano, who not long afterwards took Tribolo, his dearest
friend, to see what Buonarroti had done, telling him the whole story.
But since, as has been related, Buonarroti had drawn his figures only
in outline, Bugiardini was not able to put them into execution,
because there were neither shadows in them nor any other help;
whereupon Tribolo resolved to assist him, and thus made some
sketch-models in clay, which he executed excellently well, giving them
that boldness of manner that Michelagnolo had put into the drawing,
and working them over with the gradine, which is a toothed instrument
of iron, to the end that they might be somewhat rough and might have
greater force; and, thus finished, he gave them to Giuliano. However,
since that manner did not please the smooth fancy of Bugiardini, no
sooner had Tribolo departed than he took a brush and, dipping it from
time to time in water, so smoothed them that he took away the
gradine-marks and polished them all over, insomuch that, whereas the
lights should have served as contrasts to make the shadows stronger,
he contrived to destroy all the excellence that made the work perfect.
Which having afterwards heard from Giuliano himself, Tribolo laughed
at the foolish simplicity of the man; and Giuliano finally delivered
the work finished in such a manner that there is nothing in it to show
that Michelagnolo ever looked at it.
In the end, being old and poor, and having very few works to do,
Giuliano applied himself with extraordinary and even incredible pains
to make a Pieta in a tabernacle that was to go to Spain, with figures
of no great size, and executed it with such diligence, that it seems a
strange thing to think of an old man of his age having the patience to
do such a work for the love that he bore to art. On the doors of that
tabernacle, in order to depict the darkness that fell at the death of
the Saviour, he painted a Night on a black ground, copied from the one
by the hand of Michelagnolo which is in the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo.
But since that statue has no other sign than an owl, Giuliano, amusing
himself over his picture of Night by giving rein to his fancy, painted
there a net for catching thrushes by night, with the lantern, and one
of those little vessels holding a candle, or rather, a candle-end,
that are carried about at night, with other suchlike things that have
something to do with darkness and gloom, such as night-caps, coifs,
pillows, and bats; wherefore Buonarroti was like to dislocate his jaw
with laughing when he saw this work and considered with what strange
caprices Bugiardini had enriched his Night.
Finally, after having always been that kind of man, Giuliano died at
the age of seventy-five, and was buried in the Church of S. Marco at
Florence, in the year 1556.
Giuliano once relating to Bronzino how he had seen a very beautiful
woman, after he had praised her to the skies, Bronzino said, "Do you
know her?" "No," answered Giuliano, "but she is a miracle of beauty.
Just imagine that she is a picture by my hand, and there you have
her."
CRISTOFANO GHERARDI, CALLED DOCENO
LIFE OF CRISTOFANO GHERARDI [CALLED DOCENO] OF BORGO SAN SEPOLCRO
PAINTER
While Raffaello dal Colle of Borgo San Sepolcro, who was a disciple of
Giulio Romano and helped him to paint in fresco the Hall of
Constantine in the Papal Palace at Rome, and the apartments of the Te
in Mantua, was painting, after his return to the Borgo, the
altar-piece of the Chapel of SS. Gilio e Arcanio (in which, imitating
Giulio and Raffaello da Urbino, he depicted the Resurrection of
Christ, a work that was much extolled), with another altar-piece of
the Assumption for the Frati de' Zoccoli without the Borgo, and some
other works for the Servite Friars at Citta di Castello; while, I say,
Raffaello was executing these and other works in the Borgo, his native
place, acquiring riches and fame, a young man sixteen years of age,
called Cristofano, and by way of by-name, Doceno, the son of Guido
Gherardi, a man of honourable family in that city, was attending from
a natural inclination and with much profit to painting, drawing and
colouring so well and with such grace, that it was a marvel. Wherefore
the above-named Raffaello, having seen some animals by the hand of
this Cristofano, such as dogs, wolves, hares, and various kinds of
birds and fishes, executed very well, and perceiving that he was most
agreeable in his conversation and very witty and amusing, although he
lived a life apart, almost like a philosopher, was well pleased to
form a friendship with him and to have him frequent his workshop in
order to learn.
Now, after Cristofano had spent some time drawing under the discipline
of Raffaello, there arrived in the Borgo the painter Rosso, with whom
he contracted a friendship, and received some of his drawings; and
these Doceno studied with great diligence, considering, as one who had
seen no others but those by the hand of Raffaello, that they were very
beautiful, as indeed they were. But these studies were broken off by
him, for, when Giovanni de' Turrini of the Borgo, at that time Captain
of the Florentines, went with a band of soldiers from the Borgo and
from Citta di Castello to the defence of Florence, which was besieged
by the armies of the Emperor and of Pope Clement, Cristofano went
thither among the other soldiers, having been led away by his many
friends. It is true that he did this no less in the hope of having
some occasion to study the works in Florence than with the intention
of fighting; but in this he failed, for his captain, Giovanni, had to
guard not a place within the city, but the bastions on the hill
without. That war finished, and the guard of Florence being commanded
not long afterwards by Signor Alessandro Vitelli of Citta di Castello,
Cristofano, drawn by his friends and by his desire to see the pictures
and sculptures of the city, enlisted as a soldier in that guard. And
while he was in that service, Signor Alessandro, having heard from
Battista della Bilia, a painter and soldier from Citta di Castello,
that Cristofano gave his attention to painting, and having obtained a
beautiful picture by his hand, determined to send him with that same
Battista della Bilia and with another Battista, likewise of Citta di
Castello, to decorate with sgraffiti and paintings a garden and loggia
that he had begun at Citta di Castello. But the one Battista having
died while that garden was being built up, and the other Battista
having taken his place, for the time being, whatever may have been the
reason, nothing more was done.