Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 2.djvu/426

418 half-dying creatures were black, covered with white crosses; each was conducted by four attendants, clothed in the vestments of the grave; these last-mentioned figures, bearing black torches and a large black standard, covered with crosses, bones, and death’s heads. While this train of the dead proceeded on its way, each sang, with a trembling voice, and all in dismal unison, that psalm of David called the Miserere.

The novelty and the terrible character of this singular spectacle, filled the whole city, as I have before said, with a mingled sensation of terror and admiration, and although at the first sight it did not seem well calculated for a Carnival show, yet being new, and within the reach of every man’s comprehension, it obtained the highest encomium for Piero as the author and contriver of the whole, and was the cause as well as commencement of numerous representations, so ingenious and effective, that by these things Florence, acquired a reputation for the conduct of such subjects and the arrangement of similar spectacles, such as was never equalled by any other city. The old people who still remain, of those by whom the procession above described was witnessed, retain the most lively recollection of the scene, and are never weary of extolling the extraordinary spectacle presented by it. I remember to have heard Andrea di Cosimo, who assisted Pietro in the preparation of the show, and Andrea del Sarto, who was Piero’s disciple and also took part in it, affirm that this invention was intended, as was believed at the time, to signify and prefigure the return to Florence of the Medici family, for at the time when this triumph was exhibited, the Medici were exiles, and so to speak dead, but dead that might be expected soon to arise again, in which sense were interpreted certain words of the verses sung on that occasion, and which are as follow:—