n expression of
terror by no means agreeable. This work, I say, if there had been any
beauty in the heads, would have been so beautiful that there would have
been nothing better to be seen. But in this matter of the expressions of
the heads, in the opinion of the people of Siena, Sodoma was superior to
Domenico, for the reason that Sodoma made them much more beautiful,
although those of Domenico had more design and greater force. And, in
truth, the manner of the heads in these our arts is of no little
importance, and by painting them with graceful and beautiful expressions
many masters have escaped the censure that they might have incurred for
the rest of their work.

This was the last work in painting executed by Domenico, who, having
taken it into his head in the end to work in relief, began to give his
attention to casting in bronze, and went so far with this that he
executed, although with extraordinary labour, six Angels of bronze in
the round, little less than life-size, for the six columns nearest the
high-altar of the Duomo. These Angels, which are very beautiful, are
holding tazze, or rather little basins, which support candelabra
containing lights, and in the last of them he acquitted himself so well,
that he was very highly praised for them. Whereupon, growing in courage,
he made a beginning with figures of the twelve Apostles, which were to
be placed on the columns lower down, where there are now some of marble,
old and in a bad manner; but he did not continue them, for he did not
live long after that. And since he was a man of infinite ingenuity, and
succeeded well in everything, he engraved wood-blocks by himself in
order to make prints in chiaroscuro, and there are to be seen prints of
two Apostles engraved by him excellently well, of which we have one in
our book of drawings, together with some sheets drawn divinely by his
hand. He also engraved copper-plates with the burin, and he executed
with aquafortis some very fanciful little stories of alchemy, in which
Jove and the other Gods, wishing to congeal Mercury, place him bound in
a crucible, and Vulcan and Pluto make fire around him; but when they
think that he must be fixed, Mercury flies away and goes off in smoke.

Domenico, in addition to the works described above, executed many others
of no great importance, pictures of the Madonna and other suchlike
chamber-pictures, such as a Madonna that is in the house of the
Chevalier Donati, and a picture in