l, to the end that he might be set to
making figures and scenes of marble for the facade of S. Petronio, the
principal church of that city. Wherefore he spoke to Tribolo, and
having seen some of his works, which pleased him, as also did the
young man's ways and other qualities, he took him to Bologna, where
Tribolo, with great diligence and with much credit to himself, in a
short time made the two Sibyls of marble that were afterwards placed
in the ornament of that door of S. Petronio which leads to the Della
Morte Hospital. These works finished, arrangements were being made to
give him greater things to do, and he was receiving many proofs of
love and affection from M. Bartolommeo, when the plague of the year
1525 began in Bologna and throughout all Lombardy; whereupon Tribolo,
in order to avoid that plague, made his way to Florence. After living
there during all the time that this contagious and pestilential
sickness lasted, he departed as soon as it had ceased, and returned,
in obedience to a summons, to Bologna, where M. Bartolommeo, not
allowing him to set his hand to any work for the facade, resolved,
seeing that many of his friends and relatives had died, to have a tomb
made for himself and for them. And so Tribolo, after finishing the
model, which M. Bartolommeo insisted on seeing completed before he did
anything else, went in person to Carrara to have the marbles
excavated, intending to rough-hew them on the spot and to lighten them
in such a manner, that they might not only be easier to transport, as
indeed they were, but also that the figures might come out larger. In
that place, in order not to waste his time, he blocked out two large
children of marble, which were taken to Bologna with beasts of burden,
unfinished as they were, together with the rest of the work; and after
the death of M. Bartolommeo, which caused such grief to Tribolo that
he returned to Tuscany, they were placed, with the other marbles, in
a chapel in S. Petronio, where they still are.

Having thus departed from Carrara, Tribolo, on his way back to
Florence, stayed in Pisa to visit the sculptor Maestro Stagio da
Pietrasanta, his very dear friend, who was executing in the Office of
Works of the Duomo in that city two columns with capitals of marble
all in open work, which were to stand one on either side of the
high-altar and the Tabernacle of the Sacrament; and each of these was
to have upon the capital an Angel of marble one braccio and