[105] Besides Civitali’s altar of S. Regulus, and the tomb of Pietro da Noceto already mentioned, Bernardo Rossellino’s monument to Lionardo Bruni, and Desiderio’s monument to Carlo Marsuppini in S. Croce at Florence, may be cited as eminent examples of Tuscan sepulchres.

[106] The wooden statue of the Magdalen in Santa Trinita at Florence shows Desiderio’s approximation to the style of his master.  She is a careworn and ascetic saint, with the pathetic traces of great beauty in her emaciated face.

[107] This bust is in the Palazzo Strozzi at Florence.

[108] So Giovanni Santi, Raphael’s father, described Desiderio da Settignano.

[109] The following story is told about Benedetto’s youth.  He made two large inlaid chests or cassoni, adorned with all the skill of a worker in tarsia, or wood-mosaic, and carried these with him to King Matthias Corvinus, of Hungary.  Part of his journey was performed by sea.  On arriving and unpacking his chests, he found that the sea-damp had unglued the fragile wood-mosaic, and all his work was spoiled.  This determined him to practise the more permanent art of sculpture.  See Perkins, vol. i. p. 228.

[110] For further description of the sculpture at Rimini, I may refer to my Sketches in Italy and Greece, pp. 250-252.  For the student of Italian art, who has no opportunity of visiting Rimini, it is greatly to be regretted that these reliefs have never yet even in photography been reproduced.  The palace of Duke Frederick at Urbino was designed by Luziano, a Dalmatian architect, and continued by Baccio Pontelli, a Florentine.  The reliefs of dancing Cupids, white on blue ground, with wings and hair gilt, and the children holding pots of roses and gilly-flowers, in one of its great rooms, may be selected for special mention.  Ambrogio or Ambrogino da Milano, none of whose handiwork is found in his native district, and who may therefore be supposed to have learned and practised his art elsewhere, was the sculptor of these truly genial reliefs.

[111] See, for example, the remarkable bas-relief of the Doge Lionardo Loredano engraved by Perkins, Italian Sculptors, p. 201.

[112] Another Modenese, Antonio Begarelli, born in 1479, developed this art of the plasticatore, with quite as much pictorial impressiveness, and in a style of stricter science, than his predecessor Il Modanino.  His masterpieces are the “Deposition from the Cross” in S. Francesco, and the “Pieta” in S. Pietro, of his native city.

[113] The name of this great master is variously written—­Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, or Omodeo, or degli Amadei, or de’ Madeo, or a Madeo—­pointing possibly to the town Madeo as his native place.  Through a long life he worked upon the fabric of the Milanese Duomo, the Certosa of Pavia, and the Chapel of Colleoni at Bergamo.  To him we owe the general design of the facade of the Certosa and the cupola of the Duomo of Milan.  For the details of his work and an estimate of his capacity, see Perkins, Italian Sculptors, pp. 127-137.