on this promise, he chose as the first the reverend Don
Vincenzio Borghini, the Director of the Hospital of the Innocenti; and
for these favours and courtesies shown by the Lord Duke to his new
Academy, he was thanked by ten of the oldest and most excellent of its
members. But since the reformation of the Company and the rules of the
Academy are described at great length in the statutes that were drawn up
by the men elected and deputed for that purpose as reformers by the
whole body (who were Fra Giovanni Agnolo, Francesco da San Gallo, Agnolo
Bronzino, Giorgio Vasari, Michele di Ridolfo, and Pier Francesco di
Jacopo di Sandro), in the presence of the said Lieutenant, and with the
approval of his Excellency, I shall say no more about it in this place.
I must mention, however, that since the old seal and arms, or rather,
device of the Company, which was a winged ox lying down, the animal of
S. Luke the Evangelist, displeased many of them, it was ordained that
each one should give in words his suggestion for a new one, or show it
in a drawing, and then there were seen the most beautiful inventions and
the most lovely and extravagant fantasies that could be imagined. But
for all that it is not yet completely determined which of them is to be
accepted.

Meanwhile Martino, the disciple of the Frate, having come from Messina
to Florence, died in a few days, and was buried in the above-named tomb
that had been made by his master. And not long afterwards, in 1564, the
good father himself, Fra Giovanni Agnolo, who had been so excellent a
sculptor, was buried in the same tomb with most honourable obsequies, a
very beautiful oration being delivered in his praise in the Temple of
the Nunziata by the very reverend and most learned Maestro Michelagnolo.
Truly great is the debt that our arts for many reasons owe to Fra
Giovanni Agnolo, in that he bore infinite love to them and likewise to
their craftsmen; and of what great service has been and still is that
Academy, which may be said to have received its origin from him in the
manner that has been described, and which is now under the protection of
the Lord Duke Cosimo, and assembles by his command in the new sacristy
of S. Lorenzo, where there are so many works in sculpture by
Michelagnolo, may be recognized from this, that not only in the
obsequies of that Buonarroti (which, thanks to our craftsmen and to the
assistance of the Prince, were not merely magnificent, but little less
tha