arms of that Count, who are standing in very spirited
attitudes, with a childish grace; and besides the figure of the dead
Count, with his likeness, which he made on the sarcophagus, in the
middle of the wall above the bier there is a figure of Charity, with
certain children, wrought with much diligence and very well in harmony
with the whole. The same is seen in a Madonna with the Child in her
arms, in a lunette, which Mino made as much like the manner of Desiderio
as he could; and if he had assisted his methods of work by studying from
the life, there is no doubt that he would have made very great progress
in his art. This tomb, with all its expenses, cost 1,600 lire, and he
finished it in 1481, thereby acquiring much honour, and obtaining a
commission to make a tomb for Lionardo Salutati, Bishop of Fiesole, in
the Vescovado of that place, in a chapel near the principal chapel, on
the right hand as one goes up; on which tomb he portrayed him in his
episcopal robes, as lifelike as possible. For the same Bishop he made a
head of Christ in marble, life-size and very well wrought, which was
left among other bequests to the Hospital of the Innocenti; and at the
present day the Very Reverend Don Vincenzio Borghini, Prior of that
hospital, holds it among his most precious examples of these arts, in
which he takes a delight beyond my power to express in words.

In the Pieve of Prato Mino made a pulpit entirely of marble, in which
there are stories of Our Lady, executed with much diligence and put
together so well, that the work appears all of one piece. This pulpit
stands over one corner of the choir, almost in the middle of the church,
above certain ornaments made under the direction of the same Mino. He
also made portraits of Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici and his wife,
marvellously lifelike and true to nature. These two heads stood for many
years over two doors in Piero's apartment in the house of the Medici,
each in a lunette; afterwards they were removed, with the portraits of
many other illustrious men of that house, to the guardaroba of the Lord
Duke Cosimo. Mino also made a Madonna in marble, which is now in the
Audience Chamber of the Guild of the Masters in Wood and Stone; and to
Perugia, for Messer Baglione Ribi, he sent a marble panel, which was
placed in the Chapel of the Sacrament in S. Pietro, the work being in
the form of a tabernacle, with S. John on one side and S. Jerome on the
other--good figures in half-relie