Niccolò Tribolo

In Bologna, where they saw some Florentine exiles at an inn, the cautious Tribolo, "the most timorous man that I have ever known, kept on saying: 'Do not look at them or talk to them, if you care to go back to Florence'"[2] In Venice, after several days' journey, it soon appeared that Jacopo Sansovino had no present work for Niccolò, but invited him to drop in again, at his convenience.

[3] Vasari tells of the painter Giuliano Bugiardini who had been at a loss to draw a file of figures and "foreshorten them so that they should appear all in a row, or how he could find room for them in so narrow a place.

Buonarroti, feeling compassion for the poor man, took up a piece of charcoal and sketched a file of naked figures with all the judgment and excellence proper to him, and went away with many thanks from Giuliano.

Diplomatic errands were also required: on Cosimo's orders, Tribolo went to Rome to induce Michelangelo to return to Florence and take up his uncompleted stairs in the vestibule of the Laurentian Library.

Against a retaining wall at Villa Castello, Tribolo positioned a grotto on the central axis: it was completed under the direction of Giorgio Vasari with bronze birds from whose beaks water once spurted, sculpted by Giambologna and Ammanati (now in the Bargello).