The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete


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stette." It may however be mentioned with reference to the mode of  
writing the name of the assassin that, though most of his  
contemporaries wrote Bernardo Bandini, in the Breve Chronicon  
Caroli Petri de Joanninis he is called Bernardo di Bandini  
Baroncelli; and, in the Sententiae Domini Matthaei de Toscana,  
Bernardus Joannis Bandini de Baroncellis, as is written on  
Leonardo's drawing of him when hanged. Now VASARI, in the life of  
Andrea del Castagno (Vol. II, 680; ed. Milanesi 1878), tells us  
that in 1478 this painter was commissioned by order of the Signoria  
to represent the members of the Pazzi conspiracy as traitors, on the  
facade of the Palazzo del Podestà--the Bargello. This statement is  
obviously founded on a mistake, for Andrea del Castagno was already  
dead in 1457. He had however been commissioned to paint Rinaldo  
degli Albizzi, when declared a rebel and exiled in 1434, and his  
adherents, as hanging head downwards; and in consequence he had  
acquired the nickname of Andrea degl' Impiccati. On the 21st July  
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478 the Council of Eight came to the following resolution: "item  
servatis etc. deliberaverunt et santiaverunt Sandro Botticelli pro  
ejus labore in pingendo proditores flor. quadraginta largos" (see  
G. MILANESI, Arch. star. VI (1862) p. 5 note.)  
As has been told, Giuliano de' Medici was murdered on the 26th April  
1
478, and we see by this that only three months later Botticelli was  
paid for his painting of the "proditores". We can however hardly  
suppose that all the members of the conspiracy were depicted by him  
in fresco on the facade of the palace, since no fewer than eighty  
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