ree
hundred crowns more should be given to him.

[Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE VIRGIN

(_After the terra-cotta by =Alfonso Lombardi=. Bologna: S. Maria della
Vita_)

_Poppi_]

Alfonso having come into great repute through the gifts and praises
bestowed on him by the Emperor, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici took him to
Rome, where he kept many sculptors and painters about his person, in
addition to a vast number of other men of ability; and he commissioned
him to make a copy in marble of a very famous antique head of the
Emperor Vitellius. In that work Alfonso justified the opinion held of
him by the Cardinal and by all Rome, and he was charged by the same
patron to make a portrait-bust in marble of Pope Clement VII, after the
life, and shortly afterwards one of Giuliano de' Medici, father of the
Cardinal; but the latter was left not quite finished. These heads were
afterwards sold in Rome, and bought by me at the request of the
Magnificent Ottaviano de' Medici, together with some pictures; and in
our own day they have been placed by the Lord Duke Cosimo de' Medici in
that hall of the new apartments of his palace wherein I have painted, on
the ceiling and the walls, all the stories of Pope Leo X; they have been
placed, I say, in that hall, over the doors made of that red veined
marble which is found near Florence, in company with the heads of other
illustrious men of the house of Medici.

But returning to Alfonso; he then went on to execute many works in
sculpture for the same Cardinal, but these, being small things, have
disappeared. After the death of Clement, when a tomb had to be made for
him and also for Leo, the work was allotted by Cardinal de' Medici to
Alfonso; whereupon he made a model with figures of wax, which was held
to be very beautiful, after some sketches by Michelagnolo Buonarroti,
and went off to Carrara with money to have the marble quarried. But not
long afterwards the Cardinal, having departed from Rome on his way to
Africa, died at Itri, and the work slipped out of the hands of Alfonso,
because he was dismissed by its executors, Cardinals Salviati, Ridolfi,
Pucci, Cibo, and Gaddi, and it was entrusted by the favour of Madonna
Lucrezia Salviati, daughter of the great Lorenzo de' Medici, the elder,
and sister of Leo, to Baccio Bandinelli, a sculptor of Florence, who had
made models for it during the lifetime of Clement.

For this reason Alfonso, thus knocked off his high horse and almost
besid