tistry. Equal to him
is the Pharisee, who, having laid his right hand on his beard, with a
grave gesture, is drawing back a little, revealing astonishment at the
words of John.

While Rustici was executing that work, growing weary at last of having
to ask for money every day from those Consuls or their agents, who were
not always the same (and such persons are generally men who hold art or
any work of value in little account), he sold, in order to be able to
finish the work, a farm out of his patrimony that he possessed at San
Marco Vecchio, at a short distance from Florence. And yet,
notwithstanding such labours, expenses, and pains, he was poorly
remunerated for it by the Consuls and by his fellow-citizens, for the
reason that one of the Ridolfi, the head of that Guild, out of some
private spite, and perchance also because Rustici had not paid him
enough honour or allowed him to see the figures at his convenience, was
always opposed to him in everything. And so that which should have
resulted in honour for Giovan Francesco did the very opposite, for,
whereas he deserved to be esteemed not only as a nobleman and a citizen
but also as a master of art, his being a most excellent craftsman robbed
him, with the ignorant and foolish, of all that was due to his noble
blood. Thus, when Giovan Francesco's work was to be valued, and he had
chosen on his side Michelagnolo Buonarroti, the body of Consuls, at the
persuasion of Ridolfi, chose Baccio d'Agnolo; at which Rustici
complained, saying to the men of that body, at the audience, that it was
indeed something too strange that a worker in wood should have to value
the labours of a statuary, and he as good as declared that they were a
herd of oxen, but Ridolfi answered that, on the contrary, it was a good
choice, and that Giovan Francesco was a swollen bladder of pride and
arrogance. And, what was worse, that work, which deserved not less than
two thousand crowns, was valued by the Consuls at five hundred, and even
those were not paid to him in full, but only four hundred, and that only
with the help of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici.

Having met with such malignity, Giovan Francesco withdrew almost in
despair, determined that he would never again do work for public bodies,
or in any undertaking where he might have to depend on more than one
citizen or any other single person. And so, keeping to himself and
leading a solitary life in his rooms at the Sapienza, near the Servite
Fri