another nude that he had executed; and her Excellency had
them placed in the ornament in front of the fish-pond, the design and
architecture of which are by Giorgio Vasari, in the gardens of the
Pitti Palace. Baccio worked at these two figures with very great zeal,
thinking to satisfy the craftsmen and all the world as well as he had
satisfied himself; and he finished and polished them with all the
diligence and lovingness that were in him. He then set up these
figures of Adam and Eve in their place, but, when uncovered, they
experienced the same fate as his other works, and were torn to pieces
with savage bitterness in sonnets and Latin verses, one going to the
length of suggesting that even as Adam and Eve, having defiled
Paradise by their disobedience, deserved to be driven out, so these
figures, defiling the earth, deserved to be expelled from the church.
Nevertheless the statues are well-proportioned, and beautiful in many
parts; and although there is not in them that grace which has been
spoken of in other places, and which he was not able to give to his
works, yet they display so much art and design, that they deserve no
little praise. A lady who had set herself to examine these statues,
being asked by some gentlemen what she thought of these naked bodies,
answered, "About the man I can give no judgment;" and, being pressed
to give her opinion of the woman, she replied that in the Eve there
were two good points, worthy of considerable praise, in that she was
white and firm; whereby she contrived ingeniously, while seeming to
praise, covertly to deal a shrewd blow to the craftsman and his art,
giving to the statue the praise proper to the female body, which it is
also necessary to apply to the marble, the material, and which is
true of it, but not of the work or of the craftsmanship, for by such
praise the craftsmanship is not praised. Thus, then, that shrewd lady
hinted that in her opinion nothing could be praised in that statue
save the marble.

Baccio afterwards set his hand to the statue of the Dead Christ, which
likewise not succeeding as he had expected, he abandoned it when it
was already well advanced, and, taking another block of marble, began
another Christ in an attitude different from the first, and together
with that the Angel who supports the head of Christ on one leg and
with one hand His arm; and he did not rest until he had finished
entirely both the one figure and the other. When arrangements wer