ovanni, and other people of distinction. In this work
are Moors, Indians, costumes of strange shapes, and a most bizarre
hut. In a loggia at Poggio a Cajano he began a Sacrifice in fresco
for Lorenzo de' Medici, but it remained unfinished. And for the
Nunnery of S. Geronimo, above the Costa di S. Giorgio in Florence,
he began the panel of the high-altar, which was brought nearly to
completion after his death by the Spaniard Alonzo Berughetta, but
afterwards wholly finished by other painters, Alonzo having gone to
Spain. In the Palazzo della Signoria he painted the panel of the
hall where the Council of Eight held their sittings, and he made the
design for another large panel, with its ornament, for the Sala
del Consiglio; which design his death prevented him from beginning
to put into execution, although the ornament was carved; which
ornament is now in the possession of Maestro Baccio Baldini, a most
excellent physician of Florence, and a lover of every sort of
talent. For the Church of the Badia of Florence he made a very
beautiful S. Jerome; and he began a Deposition from the Cross for
the high-altar of the Friars of the Nunziata, but only finished the
figures in the upper half of the picture, for, being overcome by a
most cruel fever and by that contraction of the throat that is
commonly known as quinsy, he died in a few days at the age of
forty-five.
Thereupon, having ever been courteous, affable, and kindly, he was
lamented by all those who had known him, and particularly by the
youth of his noble native city, who, in their public festivals,
masques, and other spectacles, ever availed themselves, to their
great satisfaction, of the ingenuity and invention of Filippo, who
has never had an equal in things of that kind. Nay, he was so
excellent in all his actions, that he blotted out the stain (if
stain it was) left to him by his father--blotted it out, I say, not
only by the excellence of his art, wherein he was inferior to no man
of his time, but also by the modesty and regularity of his life,
and, above all, by his courtesy and amiability; and how great are
the force and power of such qualities to conciliate the minds of all
men without exception, is only known to those who either have
experienced or are experiencing it. Filippo was buried by his sons
in S. Michele Bisdomini, on April 13, 1505; and while he was being
borne to his tomb all the shops in the Via de' Servi were closed, as
is done sometimes for the
|