This year, 1516, also marks a journey to a hermitage of his order at
Lecceto, between Florence and Pisa. Here he painted a _Deposition
from the Cross_ on the wall of the Hospice, and two heads of Christ
on two tiles above the doors.
A great many of his works are in private collections in Florence; one
of the most lovely is the _Pieta_, painted for Agnolo Doni, and
now in the Corsini Gallery at Rome.
All this time the great painting of the _Enthronement of the
Virgin_, ordered by Pier Soderini, before his exile, was still
unfinished. He seems to have taken it in hand again about this time,
but being attacked with another access of fever, again left it, and the
painting, shadowed in with black, remains in the Uffizi. Lanzi writes
of it that, imperfect as it is, it may be regarded as a true lesson in
art, and bears the same relation to painting as the clay model to the
finished statue, the genius of the inventor being impressed upon it.
Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle [Footnote: _History of Painting_,
vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. 455.] call this a _Conception_, but
Vasari's old name of the _Patron Saints of Florence_ seems to fit
it best.
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