the consuls, Lorenzo Ghiberti received a good farm near the Badia di Settimo, as a gift from the Signoria;[1] nor did any long time elapse before he was himself received among the Signory, and honoured with a place in the supreme magistracy of the city.[2] On this occasion, therefore, the Florentines deserved praises for their gratitude, as they have well merited the reproach of unthankfulness towards the many excellent men with respect to whom the country has proved itself by no means grateful.
After this most stupendous work,[3] Lorenzo undertook the bronze ornaments of that door of the same church which is opposite to the Misericordia, with those admirably beautiful decorations of foliage which he did not survive to finish, being unexpectedly overtaken by death when he was making his arrangements and had already nearly completed the model for reconstructing the door previously erected by Andrea Pisano. This model was suffered to be lost, but I saw it formerly, when I was but a youth, in Borgo Allegri, before the descendants of Lorenzo Ghiberti had permitted it to be ruined. Lorenzo had a son called Bonaccorso,[4] who finished the
- ↑ Baldinucci affirms that this farm was not given to Ghiberti by the Signoria, but purchased by him with the money paid him for the work. —See Notizie de Professori.
- ↑ Baldinucci cites authentic documents, which prove that the family of Lorenzo belonged to the noblest of the republic, and had already enjoyed the highest honours of the city. —See Notizie, etc.
- ↑ Vasari tells us, in his Ragionamenti, that Ghiberti also prepared the model in wood for the church of San Lorenzo.
- ↑ Baldinucci, iii, p. 49, calls the son and heir of Lorenzo, Vittorio, who had a son named Bonaccorso; but the master by whom the unfinished work of Lorenzo was completed, was doubtless Vittorio. Bonaccorso was the father of a son, also named Vittorio, whom Busini in his letters calls a “good little body”. Varchi, lib. x of his Storia Fiorentina, relates the following anecdote of this second Vittorio:—“He was lodging in the Via Larga, and was in some credit, but not so much for his ov/n abilities, as for those of his forefathers, he being descended from that Lorenzo di Bartoluccio who made the bronze doors for San Giovanni, a work that is certainly marvellous, and perhaps unique in the world. This Vittorio, either by the instigation of Bogia or others, or moved by some other cause, painted on the wall of the principal room in the house, the figure of Pope Clement, in his pontifical robes, and with the triple crown on his head, standing on the steps of the gallows; while Fra Niccolo della Magna, in the disguise of the hangman, was
Ghiberti, in the most authentic description of this work—Paolo Uccello, namely. —Ed. Flor. 1846 -9.
