been or are to be made in this Palace,[1] I propose to speak at more length in another place;[2] for the present I will merely remark, that if II Cronaca and the other ingenious artists, who gave the design of this Hall, would return to life, it is my belief, that they would not recognize either the Palace, the Hall, or anything else that is there.[3] The Hall, that part of it namely which is in square, has a length of ninety braccia, and is thirty-eight braccia wide, omitting all mention of the additions made by Bandinelli and Ammanato, as above described.
But to return to Il Cronaca. In the last years of his life he became possessed with such a frenzy for the discourses of Fra Girolamo Savonarola, and his head was so filled with them, that he would speak of nothing else. This master died in 1509,[4] after an illness of some duration, in the fiftyfifth year of his age. He received honourable sepulture in the Church of Sant' Ambruogio, in the city of Florence and no long time after his decease the following epitaph was written for him by Messer Giovanni Battista Strozzi:—
Mercè de' vivi miei palazzi e tempi,
Bella Roma, vivrà l'alma mia Fiora.[5]
- ↑ That of the Signoria.
- ↑ Vasari has already mentioned certain of the facts here mentioned, in the life of Michelozzo, (see vol. i.); these repetitions have caused Bottari to believe that Vasari wrote his Lives in fragments and detached morsels, forgetting at one time what he had said at another, and consequently repeating facts already stated, almost in the same words. See Roman Edition of Vasari. The further mention here promised is given by Vasari with considerable detail in his own life, which follows.
- ↑ Vasari has said nearly the same thing respecting Michelozzo in the life of that master. See vol. i.
- ↑ Doctor Gaye, Carteggio, vol. ii. p. 481, gives the date of his death 1500. This is most probably an error of the press, since from documents given in the Carteggio itself we find that II Cronaca died in Sept., 1508. In the same work we have a proof of this master's disinterestedness, in a document relating the fact, that being chosen architect for the cathedral, he would accept no more than twelve gold ducats per annum, in place of the twenty-five which formed the usual salary, assigning as a reason, that the amount of building formerly required was no longer demanded for the cathedral.
- ↑
- Thousands of years I live, and thousands more,
- And still more thousands do I live, in you.
- My living temples and my palaces. Rome lives,
- Fair Rome! and thou, mine own loved. Florence
- Thou too shalt live.
