e Arno, and brought it to
solid ground, for which he was greatly extolled. Tempted by this
accident to the marble, certain persons wrote verses, both Tuscan and
Latin, ingeniously ridiculing Baccio, who was detested for his
loquacity and his evil-speaking against Michelagnolo and all the other
craftsmen. One among them took for his verses the following subject,
saying that the marble, after having been approved by the genius of
Michelagnolo, learning that it was to be mangled by the hands of
Baccio, had thrown itself into the river out of despair at such an
evil fate.

While the marble was being drawn out of the water, a difficult process
which took time, Baccio found, on measuring it, that it was neither
high enough nor wide enough to enable him to carve the figures of his
first model. Whereupon he went to Rome, taking the measurements with
him, and made known to the Pope how he was constrained by necessity to
abandon his first design and make another. He then made several
models, and out of their number the Pope was most pleased with one in
which Hercules had Cacus between his legs, and, grasping his hair, was
holding him down after the manner of a prisoner; and this one they
resolved to adopt and to carry into execution. On returning to
Florence, Baccio found that the marble had been conveyed into the
Office of Works of S. Maria del Fiore by Pietro Rosselli, who had
first placed on the ground some planks of walnut-wood planed square,
and laid lengthways, which he kept changing according as the marble
moved forward, under which and upon those planks he placed some round
rollers well shod with iron, so that by pulling the marble with three
windlasses, to which he had attached it, little by little he brought
it with ease into the Office of Works. The block having been set up
there, Baccio began a model in clay as large as the marble and shaped
according to the last one which he had made previously in Rome; and he
finished it, working with great diligence, in a few months. But with
all this it appeared to many craftsmen that there was not in this
model that spirited vivacity that the action required, nor that which
he had given to his first model. Afterwards, beginning to work at the
marble, Baccio cut it away all round as far as the navel, laying bare
the limbs in front, and taking care all the time to carve the figures
in such a way that they might be exactly like those of the large model
in clay.

At this same time