RNE TO HER
TOMB BY ANGELS

(_Milan: Brera, 288. Fresco_)]

LIVES OF LORENZETTO

SCULPTOR AND ARCHITECT OF FLORENCE

AND OF BOCCACCINO

PAINTER OF CREMONA

It happens at times, after Fortune has kept the talent of some fine
intellect subjected for a period by poverty, that she thinks better of
it, and at an unexpected moment provides all sorts of benefits for one
who has hitherto been the object of her hatred, so as to atone in one
year for the affronts and discomforts of many. This was seen in Lorenzo,
the son of Lodovico the bell-founder, a Florentine, who was engaged in
the work both of architecture and of sculpture, and was loved so dearly
by Raffaello da Urbino, that he not only was assisted by him and
employed in many enterprises, but also received from the same master a
wife in the person of a sister of Giulio Romano, a disciple of
Raffaello.

Lorenzetto[4]--for thus he was always called--finished in his youth the
tomb of Cardinal Forteguerra, formerly begun by Andrea Verrocchio, which
was erected in S. Jacopo at Pistoia; and there, among other things, is a
Charity by the hand of Lorenzetto, which is not otherwise than passing
good. And a little afterwards he made a figure for Giovanni Bartolini,
to adorn his garden; which finished, he went to Rome, where in his first
years he executed many works, of which there is no need to make any
further record. Then, receiving from Agostino Chigi, at the instance of
Raffaello da Urbino, the commission to make a tomb for him in S. Maria
del Popolo, where Agostino had built a chapel, Lorenzo set himself to
work on this with all the zeal, diligence, and labour in his power, in
order to come out of it with credit and to give satisfaction to
Raffaello, from whom he had reason to expect much favour and
assistance, and also in the hope of being richly rewarded by the
liberality of Agostino, a man of great wealth. Nor were these labours
expended without an excellent result, for, assisted by Raffaello, he
executed the figures to perfection: a nude Jonah delivered from the
belly of the whale, as a symbol of the resurrection from the dead, and
an Elijah, living by grace, with his cruse of water and his bread baked
in the ashes, under the juniper-tree. These statues, then, were brought
to the most beautiful completion by Lorenzetto with all the art and
diligence at his command, but he did not by any means obtain for them
that reward which his great labours and the need