Baccio da Montelupo

Both father and son are profiled in Vasari's Le Vite delle più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (or, in English, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects).

Baccio received his first important commission from the friars of the Basilica of San Domenico in Bologna, for a "Compianto" (lamentation scene), a series of terracotta statues (c. 1495).

The crowning moment of his career perhaps came with the commission in 1514 from a competition sponsored by the Florence silk merchants guild to create a statue in bronze for one of the remaining empty niches on the facade of Orsanmichele.

These labors endured in that profession, brought him the name of a good and even excellent master; and that figure is esteemed more than ever at the present day by all craftsmen, who hold it to be most beautiful.

[2]Baccio's bronze St. John the Evangelist took its place on the exterior of Orsanmichele beside works by Italian notables of the preceding century: Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Nanni di Banco.