gladness. But, although the
Frate had determined that he would spend the rest of his life in the
service of our Lord God and the salvation of his soul, and live in peace
and quietness, enjoying a knighthood that he had reserved for himself,
he did not succeed in this so easily. For he was summoned to Bologna
with great insistence by Maestro Giulio Bovio, the uncle of Vascone
Bovio, to the end that he might make the high-altar in the Church of the
Servites, which was to be all of marble and isolated, and in addition a
tomb with figures, richly decorated with variegated stone and
incrustations of marble; and he was not able to refuse him, particularly
because that work was to be executed in a church of his Order. Having
therefore gone to Bologna, he set his hand to the work and executed it
in twenty-eight months, making that altar, which shuts off the choir of
the friars from one pilaster to the other, all of marble both within and
without, with a nude Christ of two braccia and a half in the centre,
and with some other statues at the sides. That work is truly beautiful
in architecture, well designed and distributed, and so well put
together, that nothing better could be done; the pavement, also, wherein
there is the tomb of Bovio on the level of the ground, is wrought in a
beautifully ordered pattern; certain candelabra of marble, with some
little figures and scenes, are passing well contrived; and every part is
rich in carving. But the figures, besides that they are small, on
account of the difficulty that is found in conveying large pieces of
marble to Bologna, are not equal to the architecture, nor much worthy to
be praised.

While Fra Giovanni Agnolo was executing that work in Bologna, he was
ever pondering, as one who was not yet firmly resolved in the matter, in
what place, among those of his Order, he might be able most conveniently
to spend his last years; when Maestro Zaccheria, his very dear friend,
who was then Prior of the Nunziata in Florence, desiring to attract him
to that place and to settle him there, spoke of him to Duke Cosimo,
recalling to his memory the excellence of the Frate, and praying that he
should deign to make use of him. To which the Duke having answered
graciously, saying that he would avail himself of the Frate as soon as
he had returned from Bologna, Maestro Zaccheria wrote to him of the
whole matter, and then sent him a letter of Cardinal Giovanni de'
Medici, in which that lord exhorted