he attitude of his Bacchus. At other times, taking a sheet
or other large piece of cloth, and wetting it, he would wrap it round
his naked body, as if he were a model of clay or rags, and arrange the
folds; and then, climbing up to some extraordinary place, and settling
himself now in one attitude and now in another, as a Prophet, an
Apostle, a soldier, or something else, he would have himself
portrayed, standing thus for a period of two hours without speaking,
not otherwise than as if he had been a motionless statue. Many other
amusing follies of that kind poor Pippo played, but above all he was
never able to forget the Bacchus that Sansovino had made, save only
when he died, a few years afterwards.

[Illustration: MARS AND NEPTUNE

(_After =Jacopo Sansovino=. Venice: Ducal Palace_)

_Alinari_]

But to return to the statue; when it was carried to completion, it was
held to be the most beautiful work that had ever been executed by a
modern master, seeing that in it Sansovino overcame a difficulty never
yet attempted, in making an arm raised in the air and detached on
every side, which holds between the fingers a cup all cut out of the
same marble with such delicacy, that the attachment is very slight,
besides which the attitude is so well conceived and balanced on every
side, and the legs and arms are so beautiful and so well proportioned
and attached to the trunk, that to the eye and to the touch the whole
seems much more like living flesh; insomuch that the fame that it has
from all who see it is well deserved, and even more. This work, I say,
when finished, while Giovanni was alive, was visited in that courtyard
in the Gualfonda by everyone, native and stranger alike, and much
extolled. But afterwards, Giovanni being dead, his brother Gherardo
Bartolini presented it to Duke Cosimo, who keeps it as a rare thing in
his apartments, together with other most beautiful statues of marble
that he possesses. For the same Giovanni Sansovino made a very
beautiful Crucifix of wood, which is in their house in company with
many works by the ancients and by the hand of Michelagnolo.

In the year 1514, when festive preparations of great richness were to
be made in Florence for the coming of Pope Leo X, orders were given by
the Signoria and by Giuliano de' Medici that many triumphal arches of
wood should be made in various parts of the city. Whereupon Sansovino
not only executed the designs for many of these, but himself underto