magistracy in Florence is esteemed highly honourable. And now, if it should appear to any one that I have spoken at more length on this subject than may perhaps seem needful, I deserve to be excused for this, inasmuch as, that, having shown in the life of Arnolfo, that this building was out of square, and destitute of correct proportion at its first erection in 1298; that it had columns of unequal sizes in the courtyard, with arches, some of which were large and some small, stairs ill-contrived, and rooms awry and badly proportioned, it was necessary that I should also show to what extent the building had profited by the skill and judgment of Michelozzi, although even he did not arrange it in such a manner that it could be commodiously inhabited or occupied in any manner without great discomfort and the utmost inconvenience. But when, at length, the Signor Duke Cosimo came, in the year 1538, to make it his habitation, his Excellency began to bring it into abetter shape; yet, as the intentions of the duke were never understood, or as the architects who were employed by him for many years on that work did not know how to execute his purposes, he resolved to try if there were not some means whereby, without destroying the old works, in which there was certainly something good, and proceeding in accordance with the plan he had formed in his mind, the staircases and apartments, ill-contrived and inconvenient as they were, might not be brought into somewhat better order, and arranged with more regard to convenience and proportion.
Having therefore caused the Aretine painter and architect, Giorgio Vasari, to be sent for from Rome, where he was employed in the service of Pope Julius III, the duke gave him a commission, not only to make a new arrangement of the rooms which he had already caused to be commenced in the upper part of the division opposite to the Corn Market (those rooms being also awry in consequence of the defects of the ground plan), but likewise commanded him to consider whether the palace could not, without destroying the work already done, be so contrived internally that communications might be established
were the two most important magistracies of the city, after the Signoria. They were called colleges, because, says Varchi, “they could never meet apart from each other ancl from the Signoria, whether for the proposal of measures, or for the decision of business.” The having belonged to a college, rendered the descendants of a Florentine eligible to the service of the State in its public offices.
