fortifications of Corfu, and that done they both returned to Sebenico, where the diligence with which Gio van-Girolamo had pressed forward the works for the above-mentioned fortress of San Niccolò was much commended. San Michele soon afterwards returned to Venice, where he was himself highly extolled for the works thus executed in the Levant, and for the service of that Republic; it was then resolved to construct a fortress on the Lido, at the mouth of the Port of Venice that is to say.[1]
On confiding the care of this undertaking to San Michele, the Signoria exhorted him to consider, that since he had performed so much at a distance from Venice, he was now to reflect on the zeal with which it behoved him to act in a matter of so much importance as that now entrusted to him, and to bethink himself of what it was his duty to accomplish in respect of a work which was to be perpetually under the eyes of the Senate and of so many great nobles. They added, that in addition to the beauty and strength, which it was expected from him that he should give to that work, there was an especial demand, moreover, for particular care and caution on his part; seeing that he was to lay his foundations in a marshy soil and on a tongue of land beaten on all sides by the sea: that being the character of the spot on which he was nevertheless called on to construct a work which must needs become the very sport of the winds and waves, exposed as it would be to each ebb and flow[2] of the waters, while the fabric proposed was at the same time to be one of the utmost importance.[3]
San Michele then prepared a very beautiful and most exact model of the whole work;[4] and not only so, but he also reflected and decided on the best means for preparing the foundations and carrying his designs into effect. He was then commanded to set hand to the work without delay,
- ↑ Now called Sant’ Andrea del Lido, from being near the Church once dedicated to the above-mentioned Saint in that place, but now demolished.
- ↑ The question as to how much of ebb and flow those waters present, would not here be in place.
- ↑ A most admirable recipe for securing failure on the part of the exhortee.
- ↑ An act of no small courage in the master, when the lecture above described, with the despotism of those “Signori” who read it in his ears, are taken into the account.
