designs after the ancient manner, as well as others proper to the modern mode of building.
While thus sojourning in Rome, Baldassare prepared the design for the palace of the Massimi family: the plan of this building is of an oval form, and the edifice is in a new as well as very beautiful manner; the principal façade is enriched by a vestibule of Doric columns, admirable for the justice of the proportions, and proving much knowledge of art on the part of the master: equally beautiful is the distribution of the interior quadrangle; and the flight of steps by which the chief entrance is gained deserves the utmost commendation; but this building Baldassare could not finish, having been overtaken by death before its completion.[1]
But notwithstanding the great talents of this noble artist, his numerous works availed but little to his own advantage, however useful to others. It is true that he was employed by Popes, Cardinals, and other great and rich personages, but no one of them ever conferred on him any real and efiectual benefit; yet this may very possibly have happened, not so much from the want of liberality in those nobles (although they are for the most part ever most open-handed in cases where they should be least so), as from the timidity and excessive m(^esty, or to say what in this case was the fact— the simplicity and faint-heartedness of Baldassare.[2] But it is certain that by as much as all should be discreet and moderate in respect of princes who are magnanimous and liberal, by so much is it needful to be importunate and pressing towards those who are avaricious, ungrateful, and discourteous; for inasmuch.as an unremitting demand would be an unpardonable error, nay a vice, if applied to the upright and liberal, insomuch is it a virtue when practised against the mean and avaricious; nay, to be modest with such people is an absurdity and a wrong. Baldassare thus found himself very poor as
- ↑ Our readers are well aware that this palace is erected on the foundations laid for the ancient theatre of Marcellus, and Serlio affirms that Baldassare, in digging among the remains of that edifice, discovered so much of the plan that he was enabled to ascertain exactly what had been its proportions in every part.
- ↑ “We lament,” observes one of our author’s most candid as well as admiring compatriots, “that Vasari should call that an awkward faint-heartedness, which was indeed the extreme delicacy and true modesty of this most excellent master.”
