Signora, Donna Maria, Mother of the Duke Cosimo, to the effect that he should finish the figure of San Cosimo, which he had formerly commenced under the direction of Buonarroti, for the tomb of the Magnificent Lorenzo the Elder;[1] Whereupon, having set hand to the same, he completed it entirely; and that being done, the Duke, who had then constructed the more important part of the conduits for the great fountain of his Villa at Castello, also required his. services: and the matter was on this wise. ‘The decorations of the summit of that Fountain were to consist of a figure of Hercules, in the act of strangling Antaeus, out of whose mouth, in place of breath, there issues water, which ascends into the air to a considerable height; and for this it was that the Frate was commanded to make a model of tolerably large size; that model pleased his Excellency greatly, when Giovann’ Agnolo received commission to execute the work, and was ordered to repair to Carrara for the purpose of excavating the marbles.
For Carrara the Frate departed accordingly and with great good will, seeing that he had thus an opportunity for getting forward with the above-mentioned monument of Sannazzaro, more especially with a story in figures of mezzorilievo, which he desired to prepare with his own hand. While Giovann’ Agnolo was thus at Carrara it chanced that the Cardinal Doria wrote from Genoa to the Cardinal Cibo, who was also at Carrara; and his Ictter was to the effect that as Bandinelli had never completed the Statue of Prince Doria, and as he, Cardinal Doria, had no one ready to finish it, so he begged that Cibo would endeavour to procure some able artist by whom that work might be accomplished, he being very anxious to have it done. On the receipt of this letter, Cibo, who had long before obtained some knowledge of the Frate, used many efforts to prevail on him to go to Genoa; but he declared that he neither could nor would do anything for the service of his most reverend Lordship,
- ↑ From these words we (the Florentine Editors of the Passigli Edition of Vasari) are first made aware of the fact that the group of the Madonna, with the two Saints, Cosimo and Damiano, was intended for the tomb of Lorenzo the Magnificent, whom Vasari, as our readers will have remarked, always calls “the Elder,” to distinguish him from Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, whose sepulchral monument had been erected by Michael Angelo in the same place.
