Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/188

180 exhibited, not only by the confraternities or brotherhoods, but also in the private houses of the nobles; who were wont to assemble in companies at certain times, cheerfully gathering together, on which occasions there were ever among them many worthy good fellows of artists, who, besides that they were fanciful and amusing, helped to arrange the various matters required for such spectacles. Among others, four public shows, of a very splendid character, were given almost every year, one for each quarter of the city that is to say, the quarter of San Giovanni excepted, for the saint’s day of which a most solemn festival was held, as will be related in good time. Thus, in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella, they kept the feast of Sant’Ignazio; in vSanta Croce, that of San Bartolommeo, called San Baccio; in San Spirito, that of the Spirito Santo; and in the quarter of the Carmine, the festival of the Ascension of our Lord and that of the Assumption of the Virgin, were solemnized. That festival of the Ascension, then (for of the others we have already spoken sufficiently, or shall do so hereafter), was certainly most beautiful, seeing that Christ was raised from the Mount, which was very well contrived in wood-work, on a Cloud, about and amidst which were innumerable angels, and was borne upwards to a Heaven so admirably constructed, as to be really marvellous, leaving the Apostles on the Mount. This Heaven was all the more effective as being somewhat larger than that of San Felice in Piazza, but with machinery very nearly similar to that. The church of the Carmine, wherein this representation took place, is considerably broader and more lofty than that of San Felice, and in addition to that part which represented the Heaven into which the Saviour was received, there was sometimes a second erected, when it seemed good to the rulers, over the principal Tribune. This, then, presented another Heaven, in which certain vast wheels, in the manner of a windlass, were so arranged, that from the centre to the circumference, they moved ten circles, beautifully ordered to represent the ten heavens. These circles glittered with innumerable lights representing the stars, and arranged in small lamps, suspended in such a manner that they maintained their equilibrium as the wheels turned round, as is now done by lanterns of a certain kind, which are used commonly by all Jhe world. From this Heaven, or Paradise,