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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.
As long ago as the ninth century, in the year 842, Erchempert, a frate of the celebrated convent of Monte Cassino, writes, "I knew formerly Messer Landulf, Bishop of Capua, a man of singular prudence, who was wont to say, 'Whenever I meet a monk, something unlucky always happens to me during the day." And to this day, there are many persons, who, if they meet a monk or priest, on first going out in the morning, will not proceed upon their errand or business until they have returned to their house and waited awhile.
He had a dispensation from attending any of the offices in the choir with the other friars, and the gains from his works went to the convent, enough money being left in his hands to pay for colours and other materials necessary for his painting. He left disciples in Cecchino del Frate, Benedetto Cianfanini, Gabriele Rustici, and Fra Paolo Pistoiese, the latter inheriting all his possessions.
With him Frate remained for about six weeks, by which time, tiring of the Cacciatore's rough handling, he had the temerity, two days before our departure, to present himself again at our door.
Of these the Frate had not yet finished the models, when, the King being far away and occupied in fighting with the English on the borders of his kingdom, he began to be badly treated by the treasurers, not being able to draw his allowances and have whatever he desired, according as had been ordained by the King.
The Frate had been doomed beforehand, and the only question that was pretended to exist now was, whether the Republic, in return for a permission to lay a tax on ecclesiastical property, should deliver him alive into the hands of the Pope, or whether the Pope should further concede to the Republic what its dignity demanded the privilege of hanging and burning its own prophet on its own piazza.
While the Frate was thus passing his time in Rome, the people of Messina, having determined to erect on the Piazza of their Duomo a fountain with a very great enrichment of statues, had sent men to Rome to seek out some excellent sculptor.
He knew this was a foretaste of coming bitterness; yet his courage mounted under all moral attack, and he showed no sign of dismay. "Well parried, Frate!" said Tito, as Savonarola descended the steps of the Loggia. "But I fear your career at Florence is ended. What say you, my Niccolo?" "It is a pity his falsehoods were not all of a wise sort," said Macchiavelli, with a melancholy shrug.
"By the way," said Francesco Cei, "have you heard that Camilla Rucellai has outdone the Frate in her prophecies? She prophesied two years ago that Pico would die in the time of lilies.
When he was gone, the lady turned to a gloomy-looking man, who sat reading at a table, and who looked so like one of the Portuguese brothers of the Propaganda, that I took him for a frate "What a poor benighted creature that young man seems to be!" she said.
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