Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 1.djvu/516

502 all over it, from one part to another, and from one room to another, by the means of staircases, private and public, to be constructed in a manner that should make them as easy of ascent as was possible. Giorgio Vasari, therefore, while the above-mentioned rooms, which were already begun, were in process of decoration, the ceilings being enriched with oil paintings and gold, and the walls covered with frescoes, or in other cases adorned with stucco,—Giorgio, I say, examined the whole ground-plan of the palace minutely, both the new part and the old; and after he had determined, with no small labour and study, on the means to be adopted for executing what he proposed to do, he gradually began to bring the building, by little and little, into better form, and succeeded in uniting the rooms formerly separated, of which some were high and others low, almost without destroying any part of what had previously been done. But, to the end that the Signor Duke might see the design of the whole, Vasari prepared, in the space of six months, a model, in wood, representing the exact proportions of the entire fabric, which has rather the form and extent of a castle than of a palace. And this model having been approved by his Excellency, the work proceeded in accordance with it, and many commodious apartments were made, with easy staircases, private and public, which communicate with all the floors, and thus liberate the halls, which formerly were like a public road, since it was not possible to reach the upper stories without first passing through them. The whole was magnificently adorned with various paintings; and finally the roof of the great hall was raised twelve braccia above its previous height; insomuch that if Arnolfo, Michelozzo, and the other masters who had laboured on this building, from its first foundation to the present time, should return to life, they would not know it again; nay, they would rather believe that it was not their work, but a new construction and a different edifice.

But let us now return to Michelozzo: the church of San Giorgio had at this time been given to the monks of San Domenico da Fiesole, but they did not occupy it longer than from about the middle of July to the end of January, because Cosimo de’ Medici and Lorenzo his brother had obtained for them, from Pope Eugenius, the church and convent of San Marco, which had previously been occupied by Salvestrine