alities that are easily
recognized in the honourable actions of the sculptor Antonio Rossellino,
who put so much grace into his art that he was esteemed by all who knew
him as something much more than man, and adored almost as a saint, for
those supreme virtues that were united to his talent. Antonio was called
Rossellino dal Proconsolo, because he ever had his shop in a part of
Florence called by that name. He showed such sweetness and delicacy in
his works, with a finish and a refinement so perfect, that his manner
may be rightly called the true one and truly modern.

For the Palace of the Medici he made the marble fountain that is in the
second court; in which fountain are certain children opening the mouths
of dolphins that pour out water; and the whole is finished with
consummate grace and with a most diligent manner. In the Church of S.
Croce, near the holy-water basin, he made a tomb for Francesco Nori,
with a Madonna in low-relief above it; and another Madonna in the house
of the Tornabuoni, together with many other things sent to various
foreign parts, such as a tomb of marble for Lyons in France. At S.
Miniato al Monte, a monastery of White Friars without the walls of
Florence, he was commissioned to make the tomb of the Cardinal of
Portugal, which was executed by him so marvellously and with such great
diligence and art, that no craftsman can ever expect to be able to see
any work likely to surpass it in any respect whatsoever with regard to
finish or grace. And in truth, if one examines it, it appears not
merely difficult but impossible for it to have been executed so well;
for certain angels in the work reveal such grace, beauty, and art in
their expressions and their draperies, that they appear not merely made
of marble but absolutely alive. One of these is holding the crown of
chastity of that Cardinal, who is said to have died celibate; the other
bears the palm of victory, which he had won from the world. Among the
many most masterly things that are there, one is an arch of grey-stone
supporting a looped-back curtain of marble, which is so highly-finished
that, what with the white of the marble and the grey of the stone, it
appears more like real cloth than like marble. On the sarcophagus are
some truly very beautiful boys and the dead man himself, with a Madonna,
very well wrought, in a medallion. The sarcophagus has the shape of that
one made of porphyry which is in the Piazza della Ritonda in Rome. Thi