it or honour. This, which he promised to attempt to
do, he would, I believe, have done at all costs, if he had not been
prevented by death, which closed his eyes on the 7th of September in
the same year. And so the works of Castello, begun and carried well
forward by him, remained unfinished; for although some work has been
done there since his day, now in one part and now in another,
nevertheless they have never been pursued with the diligence and
resolution that were shown when Tribolo was alive and when the Lord
Duke was hot in the undertaking. Of a truth, he who does not press
great works forward while those who are having them done are spending
money willingly and devoting their best attention to them, brings it
about that those works are put on one side and left unfinished, which
zeal and solicitude could have carried to perfection. And thus, by the
negligence of the workers, the world is left without its adornment,
and they without their honour and fame, for the reason that it rarely
happens, as it did to this work of Castello, that on the death of the
first master he who succeeds to his place is willing to finish it
according to his design and model with that modesty with which Giorgio
Vasari, at the commission of the Duke, has caused the great fish-pond
of Castello to be finished after the directions of Tribolo, even as he
will do with the other things according as his Excellency may desire
from time to time to have them done.

Tribolo lived sixty-five years, and was interred by the Company of the
Scalzo in their place of burial. He left behind him a son called
Raffaello, who has not taken up art, and two daughters, one of whom is
the wife of David, Tribolo's assistant in building all the works at
Castello, who, being a man of judgment and capable in such matters, is
now employed on the aqueducts of Florence, Pisa, and all the other
places in the dominion, according as it may please his Excellency.

PIERINO (PIERO) DA VINCI

LIFE OF PIERINO (PIERO) DA VINCI

SCULPTOR

Although those men are generally the most celebrated who have executed
some work excellently well, nevertheless, if the works already
accomplished by any man foreshadow those that he did not achieve as
likely to have been numerous and much more rare, if some accident,
unforeseen and out of the common use, had not happened to interrupt
him, it is certain that such a man, wherever there may be one willing
to be just in his apprec