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Updated: May 27, 2025
What has become of the portrait of Del Conte mentioned by Vasari cannot now be ascertained. We have no external evidence to guide us. On the other hand, certain peculiarities about the portrait in the Uffizi, especially the exaggeration of one eye, lend some colouring to the belief that we here possess the picture ascribed by Vasari to Bugiardini.
It pleased Michael Angelo so much that he gave Leone a wax model of a Hercules strangling Antæus, by his own hand, together with some drawings. There exist no other portraits of Michael Angelo, except two in painting, one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte; and one in bronze, in full relief, made by Daniele da Volterra. These, and Leoni’s medal, from which many copies have been made, and a great number of them have been seen by me in several parts of Italy and abroad." Francesco d’Olanda made a drawing of the old man in hat and mantle. Another portrait of Michael Angelo is introduced into Marcello Venusti’s copy of the Last Judgment, now in the Picture Gallery at Naples. The original study for it may be the portrait in the Casa Buonarroti, at Florence; it was frequently repeated by him. One replica may be the portrait, said to be by Michael Angelo’s own hand, at the Capitol. The apostle in red on the spectator’s right of the picture of the Assumption, by Daniele da Volterra, in the Church of the Trinit
There is a document in the archives, proving that on October 5th, 1526 Bugiardini was paid twenty florins in gold for his share of the work. He obtained some rank as a portrait painter, in spite of his failure in that of Michelangelo; and had commissions from many of the celebrities of Florence. It was in original composition that his powers failed him.
There remained only some figures to put in the terrestrial group, all the celestial portions having been finished by the Frate; but they are very well drawn figures, with a good deal of expression in them. Several are likenesses, amongst whom are Dini and his wife, Bugiardini, the painter's pupil, and himself. Most of these are now destroyed by the effects of damp.
For Pietro Urbano, of Pistoja, his pupil, was a man of talent, but would never work hard. Antonio Mini had the will but not the brain, and hard wax takes a bad impression. Jacopo l’Indaco and Mineghella were boon companions of the master. A stone-cutter Domenico Fancelli nicknamed Topolino, Pilote the goldsmith, Giuliano Bugiardini the painter, were of this company.
The Corsini Gallery, Florence, has a Virgin and Child by her. The scholars of Mariotto Albertinelli were much more important in the annals of art, the principal ones being Bugiardini, Francia Bigio, Visino, and Innocenza d' Imola. Giuliano Bugiardini should be called the assistant rather than the scholar of Albertinelli, being older than his master.
His friend took up the charcoal and sketched in a splendid group of agonised nude figures; but these were beyond his power to shade and colour, and Tribolo made him a set of models in clay, in the attitudes given by Michelangelo, and from these he finished the work; but the great master's hand was never apparent in it. Bugiardini died at the age of seventy-five.
Returning now to the passage cited from Vasari, we find that he reckons only two authentic portraits in painting of Michelangelo, one by Bugiardini, the other by Jacopo del Conte. He has neglected to mention two which are undoubtedly attempts to reproduce the features of the master by scholars he had formed. Probably Vasari overlooked them, because they did not exist as easel-pictures, but were introduced into great compositions as subordinate adjuncts. One of them is the head painted by Daniele da Volterra in his picture of the Assumption at the church of the Trinit
Michelangelo's type of face was well accentuated, and all the more or less contemporary portraits of him reproduce it. Time is wasted in the effort to assign to little men their special part in the creation of a prevalent tradition. It seems to me, therefore, the function of sane criticism not to be particular about the easel-pictures ascribed to Venusti, Del Conte, and Bugiardini.
In one of these suburbs, then, without the Porta a Faenza, was born Giuliano Bugiardini, who lived there, even as his ancestors had done, until the year 1529, when all the suburbs were pulled down.
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