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There is careful painting and ingenious composition, but a less finished manner of colouring than in Andrea's Joseph, which was painted about the same time for Pier Borgherini. Like Ridolfo Ghirlandajo, Francia Bigio fell off in his later style, partly because his ambition failed him, and also because he began to look on art as a means of livelihood a motive which is certain death to high art.
In consequence of the quantity used in the inscriptional tablets of monuments, for which this seems to be the favourite material, nero antico is extremely scarce in modern Rome. The bigio antico is a grayish marble, composed of white and black, sometimes in distinct stripes or waves, and sometimes mingled confusedly together.
Vasari also tells us of the transfer of a piece of engineering work from Michael Angelo to his enemy—if such a small man deserves to be called the enemy of Michael Angelo—Nanni di Baccio Bigio. The old bridge of Santa Maria had long shown signs of giving way, and it had to be rebuilt. Paul III. entrusted the work to Michael Angelo.
Nanni di Baccio Bigio had, as it seems, good friends at court in Rome. He was an open enemy of Michelangelo, who, nevertheless, found it difficult to shake him off. In the history of S. Peter's the man's name will frequently occur. Three years elapsed.
His friend, Francia Bigio, Mariotto's pupil, having just then lost his master, who was giving more attention to his father-in- law's business of innkeeper than his own, was willing to enter into partnership, and the two youths began life together in 1509 or 1510, in a room near the Piazza del Grano, in the first house in Via del Moro, which still remains in its old state.
Francia Bigio commenced this in Andrea's absence in France, which so excited his former comrade's emulation that he did his Visitation in great haste, to get it uncovered as soon as Francia Bigio's.
Notwithstanding this powerful support, Nanni di Baccio Bigio kept trying to eject him from his post. He wrote to the Grand Duke in 1562, arguing that Buonarroti was in his dotage, and begging Cosimo to use his influence to obtain the place for himself.
It is hard and dull in colouring, the prevailing tone being a heavy drab; there are several nude figures, of doubtful forms as to beauty of drawing, the flesh is painted in a smooth glazed style, without relief or tenderness. Francia Bigio shines more in fresco than in oil; his hardness is less apparent, and he gains in freedom and brilliance of colouring in the more congenial medium.
All this while Michelangelo's enemies, headed by Nanni di Baccio Bigio, continued to calumniate and backbite. In the end they poisoned the mind of his old friend the Cardinal of Carpi.
Already I saw myself exploring those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of work and output, poking my nose into municipal archives and libraries to learn the history of those various quarries of marble, plain and coloured; tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza and Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his and the inscription he left on the rock; speculating why the Romans, who ransacked the furthermost corners of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little of the treasures here buried; why the Florentines were long content to use that grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, with its golden streaks, was lying at their very doors....
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