perceive it, and it does not appear to me to be so; but sit down again, and I will examine a bit, and comparing my work with the life, shall be able to see if it be so.” Buonarroto, who saw whence the defect proceeded and knew the want of judgment of Giuliano, instantly sat down again laughing, and Bugiardini, having looked many times, now at Michelagnolo and now at the portrait, finally rose to his feet and exclaimed, “To me it appears that the thing is as I have drawn it, and that what I have done is true to the life.” “In that case it must be a defect of nature,” replied Michelagnolo, “go on, and do not spare either pencils or art.” Giuliano finished the picture accordingly, and having done so, he gave it to Messer Ottaviano, with the portrait of Pope Clement from the hand of Fra Sebastiano; as Michelagnolo, who had caused the latter to be brought from Rome, had desired.
For Innocenzio, Cardinal Cibo, Giuliano made a copy of the picture, wherein Raffaello da Urbino had delineated Pope Leo, with Giulio, Cardinal de’ Medici, and the Cardinal de’ Rossi; but in place of Cardinal de’ Rossi, Giuliano here painted the head of Cardinal Cibo himself. In this work the artist acquitted himself extremely well, and executed the whole picture with much care and pains.[1] At the same time Giuliano took the likeness of Cencio Guasconi, who was at that period an exceedingly beautiful youth; and subsequently he painted in fresco a Tabernacle at the villa of Baccio Pedoni, which is situate near Olmo-a -Castello. In this work there is not much design, but it is well and very carefully executed.
Meanwhile Palla Rucellai was urging Giuliano to finish the picture of which we have made mention above; the painter, therefore, determined to request Michelagnolo to look at the work, and having conducted him to the place where he had it, he plainly asked Buonarroti, after he had related to him with what trouble he had executed the lightnings, which, descending from heaven destroy those wheels, and kill the men who are turning them, as also the pains with which he had produced a figure of the Sun, that bursting through the clouds effects the liberation of Santa Caterina from death: having related all this I say to Michelagnolo,
- ↑ Bottari tells us that the last Cardinal Cibo sold this picture to Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, on whose death it passed to the heirs of that prelate.
