have it (for even the marble and other excellent works of men are subjected to Fortune,) there arose many discords among those monks, and the government of that community was consequently changed. The work therefore remained unfinished in the Guarlondo until the year 1530; at which time, war raging around the city of Florence, all these labours, the fruit of inconceivable toils and cares, were destroyed by the soldiery: those heads, executed with so much care, were brutally hewn from the figures; the whole was, in short, so completely ruined, that the monks afterwards sold the remnants for a trifling sum, and whoever shall desire to see a portion of them, may go to the house of the wardens of Santa Maria del Fiore, where there are several morsels, bought as broken marble some few years since by the officials of that cathedral.[1] Truly may it be said that, as in those monasteries and other places where there are peace and concord, all things proceed to a satisfactory conclusion, so, on the contrary, where ambition and discord bear rule, nothing is ever brought to perfection, nothing attains to the desired end; for that which a good and wise government has contrived to bring about by care and prudence in a hundred years, shall frequently be ruined by a coarse and ignorant fool in a single day, and of a truth it does sometimes appear as if Fortune preferred those who know the least, and are the most incapable of taking pleasure in anything good or excellent, since she seems to call such by preference to govern and command, or rather to ruin and destroy every thing, as Ariosto, speaking of secular princes, remarks, no less judiciously than truly, in the commencement of his letters, canto xvii.[2]
- ↑ Four historical representations in basso-relievo, with numerous pieces of the several ornaments belonging to this work, are now in the Public Gallery of Florence, in the small corridor of the modem sculptures, that is to say. It is matter of surprise that Cicognara should be unacquainted with their existence, and the place wherein they were deposited; yet, that he must be so, is manifest from the fact that in the 3rd cap. of lib. v., Storia, &c., he declares that after the ruin suffered about the year 1530, ‘‘ the broken relics were entirely dispersed.”
- ↑ The stanza of Ariosto here alluded to is as follows;—
Il giusto Dio quando i peccati nostri
Han di remission passato il segno,
Acciò che la giustizia sua dimostri
Equale alia pietà, spesso dà regno
