Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/396

388 most devoutly inclined. Of this book Poliziano makes mention in his Mugellane wherein he has availed himself thereof as authority, extolling Fra Giocondo at the same time as a writer profoundly versed in all matters connected with antiquities.

Fra Giocondo likewise wrote a treatise, which has been printed, on the Commentaries of Caesar; he was the first who made a design of the bridge constructed by Caesar on the Rhone, and which the latter has described in the Commentaries: but this description was misunderstood in the time of Fra Giocondo, as we find remarked by the above-named Budoeus, who calls Fra Giocondo his teacher in architecture, and thanks God that he was furnished with so learned and so diligent a preceptor, after the errors of Vitruvius, in whom a vast amount of faults had remained undetected, until made known and rectified by Fra Giocondo. And this that monk might very well do, seeing that he was skilled in all learning, as well as in the Greek and Latin, of which he had the most minute knowledge. Thus much and more is affirmed of Fra Giocondo by Budoeus, who furthermore extols him as an excellent architect: he adds the remark, that by his means the greater part of Pliny’s Epistles were discovered in an ancient library of Paris, and these having ceased to be found in the hands of men, were then printed by Aldus Minutius, as may be read in a Latin Epistle written by Fra Giocondo, and which is printed with the same.

Being in Paris, and in the service of the King, Louis XII., Fra Giocondo constructed two most magnificent bridges over the Seine they are furnished with shops, and the work is