is not without merit; the child Jesus seated on his mother's knees,
gives the ring to S. Catherine, little S. John stands at the Virgin's
feet, S. Anthony on her left. The colouring is less pleasing, the flesh
tints too red and raw.

A round picture in the Zambeccari Gallery, Bologna, shows him in
Michelangelo's style. The Virgin is reading on a wooded bank, but looks
up to see the infant Christ greet the approaching S. John Baptist; this
is carefully, if rather hardly, painted. The lights in the Saviour's
hair have been touched in with gold. The time of his stay in Bologna is
uncertain, but in 1525 he was in Florence, and drawing designs for the
Ringhiera with Andrea del Sarto. There is a document in the archives,
proving that on October 5th, 1526 Bugiardini was paid twenty florins in
gold for his share of the work. He obtained some rank as a portrait
painter, in spite of his failure in that of Michelangelo; and had
commissions from many of the celebrities of Florence. It was in
original composition that his powers failed him. Messer Palla Rucellai
ordered a picture from him of the _Martyrdom of S. Catherine_,
which he began with the intention of making it a very fine work indeed.
He spent several years in representing the wheels, the lightnings and
fires in a sufficiently terrible aspect, but had to beg Michelangelo's
assistance in drawing the men who were to be killed by those heavenly
flames; his design was to have a row of soldiers in the foreground, all
knocked down in different attitudes. His friend took up the charcoal
and sketched in a splendid group of agonised nude figures; but these
were beyond his power to shade and colour, and Tribolo made him a set
of models in clay, in the attitudes given by Michelangelo, and from
these he finished the work; but the great master's hand was never
apparent in it. Bugiardini died at the age of seventy-five.