finding all the reports to be false and malignant, Nanni was dismissed with few compliments, and in the presence of many nobles, being reproached at the same time with the destruction of the Bridge of Santa Maria, and with having promised to clean the Harbour of Ancona at small cost, whereas he had injured that Port more in one year than the Sea had ever done in ten. And this was the end of Nanni Bigio’s employment in San Pietro,[1] where Michelagnolo had employed seventeen years merely in the care of so fixing the arrangement of all its parts, that they should not be altered; the envious persecutions to which he was subjected, making him fear that changes in the building might be effected after his death: but he has thus brought things to such a state, that the work has now a fair prospect of being securely completed.
By all this we see that God, who protects the good, has defended him while he lived, having extended his hand over the fabric and the master, even to his death. Then Pope Pius IV., who survived him, commanded the superintendents to alter nothing that Michelagnolo had arranged; while Pius V., his successor, continued with even greater authority, to command that the designs of Michelagnolo should be followed with unvarying exactitude, nay, when the architects Piero Ligorio, and Jacopo Vignola, were directing the fabric, he caused the former, who presumptuously proposed certain changes, to be dismissed with little honour, and the whole charge was then made over to Vignola.
That Pontiff was indeed as zealous for the honour of the edifice, as for the glory of the Christian faith; and in the year 1565, when Vasari went to pay his respects to His Holiness—as well as in the next year, when he was again summoned to Rome—the Pontiff* spoke of nothing but the regard that was to be paid to the designs left by Michelagnolo; and, to obviate all disorder, he commanded Vasari to repair to the Bishop Ferratino, in company with Messer Guglielmo Sangalletti, the private treasurer of His Holiness, on the part of Pope Pius, and to direct that prelate, who was chief of the builders, on all occasions to guide himself by the important records and memoranda which Vasari would give him; to the end that no malignant or presumptuous person should ever prevail to alter a single point of those arrangements made by the admirable genius of Michelagnolo. On this occasion, Messer
- ↑ He was afterwards re-instated. See Gaye, loc. cit.
