ed both
in appearance and in deed.
Now Andrea, having carried this work very nearly to completion, being
blinded by envy of the praises that he heard given to the talent of
Domenico, determined to remove him from his path; and after having
thought of many expedients, he put one of them into execution in the
following manner. One summer evening, according to his custom, Domenico
took his lute and went forth from S. Maria Nuova, leaving Andrea in his
room drawing, for he had refused to accept the invitation to take his
recreation with Domenico, under the pretext of having to do certain
drawings of importance. Domenico therefore went to take his pleasure by
himself, and Andrea set himself to wait for him in hiding behind a
street corner; and when Domenico, on his way home, came up to him, he
crushed his lute and his stomach at one and the same time with certain
pieces of lead, and then, thinking that he had not yet finished him off,
beat him grievously on the head with the same weapons; and finally,
leaving him on the ground, he returned to his room in S. Maria Nuova,
where he put the door ajar and sat down to his drawing in the manner
that he had been left by Domenico. Meanwhile an uproar had arisen, and
the servants, hearing of the matter, ran to call Andrea and to give the
bad news to the murderer and traitor himself, who, running to where the
others were standing round Domenico, was not to be consoled, and kept
crying out: "Alas, my brother! Alas, my brother!" Finally Domenico
expired in his arms; nor could it be discovered, for all the diligence
that was used, who had murdered him; and if Andrea had not revealed the
truth in confession on his death-bed, it would not be known now.
In S. Miniato fra le Torri in Florence Andrea painted a panel containing
the Assumption of Our Lady, with two figures; and in a shrine in the
Nave a Lanchetta, without the Porta alla Croce, he painted a Madonna. In
the house of the Carducci, now belonging to the Pandolfini, the same man
depicted certain famous men, some from imagination and some portrayed
from life, among whom are Filippo Spano degli Scolari, Dante, Petrarca,
Boccaccio, and others. At Scarperia in Mugello, over the door of the
Vicar's Palace, he painted a very beautiful nude figure of Charity,
which has since been ruined. In the year 1478, when Giuliano de' Medici
was killed and his brother Lorenzo wounded in S. Maria del Fiore by the
family of the Pazzi and their adherent
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