494 THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. Chap. XIV. Giuliano Bugiardini whose earliest period, of artistic development has thus been traced, was older by three years than Mariotto, and was born in 1471 in the suburbs of Florence. 1 The diligence which he exhibited in the garden of the Medici, endeared him to Michael Angelo whom he fol lowed into the shop of Domenico Ghirlandaio. 2 He af terwards performed the duties of assistant to Mariotto at Florence and Gualfonda, and was one of those whom Buonai'otti uselessly employed in Rome when he first un dertook the ceiling of the Sixtine chapel. 3 During a long service in irresponsible capacities, he was admitted to have been known for assiduity and precision in trans ferring the drawings of others to panel. 4 When he ad vanced late in life to an independent position, his ability in undertaking original subjects was necessarily slight, and he confined himself to the handling of the simplest incidents. The Virgin and child, alone or accompanied by the little Baptist, sometimes attended by saints, was his usual theme; illustrations of which we find in the Madonna at the Uffizi known for years as by Leonardo; in a Virgin, child, and Baptist at the Museum of Leipzig, a Nativity at Bei'lin, and .a Marriage of S. Catherine at the Pinaco- teca of Bologna. Bugiardini did not fail occasionally to discern the grace ful and appropriate in his cotemporaries. His grouping in the. Madonna of the Uffizi is not without merit. The Virgin’s face, with its broken outlines and wasted an gular features, is cast in the mould of Leonardo’s nun at the Pitti, though tinged with a sickly melancholy. Her action is not without sentiment, her head being pensively bent, and her hand pointing at the breast which” the child has just abandoned. There is even a Raphaelesque move- wood, oil, figures 1 / 4 of life size, called Mariotto (?). 2 See the income return of his father, Piero di Mariano di Bona- giunta, in Tav.Alfab. ub. sup. 2 Vas. X. 34C. 7. 3 Vas. XII. 190. — Circa 1508. 4 Vas. X. 348.