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[Sidenote:  The Aragazzi Tomb.]

In the Denunzia de’ beni of 1427 Donatello states that he was working with Michelozzo on the tomb of Bartolommeo Aragazzi, and the monument has therefore been ascribed to them both.  But recent research has established that, though preparatory orders were given in that year, a fresh contract was made two years later, and that Donatello’s share in the work was nil.  Michelozzo alone got payment up to 1436 or thereabouts, when the tomb was completed.  Donatello’s influence would, perhaps, have been visible in the design, but unhappily we can no longer even judge of this, for the tomb is a wreck, having been broken up to make room for structural alterations.[93] Important fragments are preserved, scattered about the church; but the sketch of the tomb, said to be preserved in the local library, has never yet been discovered.  The monument had ill-fortune from the very beginning.  An amusing letter has come down to us, pathetic too, for it records the first incident in the tragedy.  Leonardo Aretino writes to Poggio, that when going home one day he came across a party of men trying to extricate a wagon which had stuck in the deep ruts.  The oxen were out of breath and the teamsmen out of temper.  Leonardo went up to them and made inquiries.  One of the carters, wiping the sweat from his brow, muttered an imprecation upon poets, past, present and future (Dii perdant poetas omnes, et qui fuerunt unquam et qui futuri sunt.) Leonardo, a poet himself, asked what harm they had done him:  and the man simply replied that it was because this poet, Aragazzi, who was lately dead, ordered his marble tomb to be taken all the way to Montepulciano from Rome, where he died; hence the trouble. “Haec est imago ejus quam cernis,” said the man, pointing to the effigy, having incidentally remarked that Aragazzi was “stultus nempe homo ac ventosus."[94] Certainly Aragazzi was not a successful man, and he was addicted to vanity.  In the marble we see a wan melancholy face, seemingly of one who failed to secure due measure of public recognition.  The monument need not be further described, except to say that two of the surviving figures are very remarkable.  They probably acted as caryatides, of which there must have been three, replacing ordinary columns as supporters of the sarcophagus.  They can hardly be Virtues, for they are obviously muscular men with curly hair and brawny arms.  They are not quite free from mannerisms:  the attitudes, granting that the bent position were required by their support of the tomb, are not quite easy or natural.  But, in spite of this, they are really magnificent things, placing their author high among sculptors of his day.

[Footnote 93:  The effigy is placed in a niche close to the great door of the Cathedral, put there “lest the memory of so distinguished a man should perish”—­“Simulacrum ejus diu neglectum, ne tanti viri memoria penitus deleretur, Politiana pietas hic collocandum curavit anno MDCCCXV.”  The remainder consists of a frieze now incorporated in the high altar, on either side of which stand two caryatides.  The Christ Blessing is close by.  Two bas-reliefs are inserted into pillars opposite the effigy.]