en a Pharisee and a Levite. That work was much after the
heart of Giovan Francesco, because it was to be set up in a place so
celebrated and of such importance, and, besides this, by reason of the
competition with Andrea Contucci. Having therefore straightway set his
hand to it and made a little model, which he surpassed in the excellence
of the work itself, he showed all the consideration and diligence that
such a labour required. When finished, the work was held to be in all
its parts the best composed and best conceived of its kind that had been
made up to that time, the figures being wholly perfect and wrought with
great grace of aspect and also extraordinary force. In like manner, the
nude arms and legs are very well conceived, and attached at the joints
so excellently, that it would not be possible to do better; and, to say
nothing of the hands and feet, what graceful attitudes and what heroic
gravity have those heads!

[Illustration: S. JOHN PREACHING

(_After the bronze by =Giovan Francesco Rustici=. Florence: The
Baptistery_)

_Alinari_]

Giovan Francesco, while he was fashioning that work in clay, would have
no one about him but Leonardo da Vinci, who, during the making of the
moulds, the securing them with irons, and, in short, until the statues
were cast, never left his side; wherefore some believe, but without
knowing more than this, that Leonardo worked at them with his own hand,
or at least assisted Giovan Francesco with his advice and good judgment.
These statues, which are the most perfect and the best conceived that
have ever been executed in bronze by a modern master, were cast in three
parts and polished in the above-mentioned house in the Via de' Martelli
where Giovan Francesco lived; and so, also, the ornaments of marble that
are about the S. John, with the two columns, the mouldings, and the
emblem of the Guild of Merchants. In addition to the S. John, which is a
spirited and lively figure, there is a bald man inclined to fatness,
beautifully wrought, who, having rested the right arm on one flank, with
part of a shoulder naked, and with the left hand holding a scroll before
his eyes, has the left leg crossed over the right, and stands in an
attitude of deep contemplation, about to answer S. John; and he is
clothed in two kinds of drapery, one delicate, which floats over the
nude parts of the figure, and over that a mantle of thicker texture,
executed with a flow of folds full of mastery and ar