Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/398

390 But the work for which, as it appears to me, Fra Giocondo merits the utmost praise, is one for which not only the Venetians but all the world may be said to have eternal obligation to his memory. Well perceiving that the duration of the Venetian Republic depended on the preservation of its inexpugnable position on the Lagoons, in the midst of which that city is erected, almost as it were, by miracle. Fra Giocondo likewise remarked, that in proportion as the Lagoons should become choked with debris, so would the air be rendered insalubrious, and thus the place would gradually be found to be uninhabitable, or would at the least be exposed to all such dangers, from infection or otherwise, as are wont to assail the cities of the main land. He, therefore, set himself to consider in what manner he might provide for the preservation of the Lagoons and for the continual retention of the city in that site whereon she had been constructed at the first.

Having found what he sought. Fra Giocondo then declared to the Signori that it was time they took measures for the prevention of an evil which, if they deferred their resolution to that intent much longer, would certainly cause them to repent their delay in a very few years, as they might easily judge from what they already saw to have happened in part; adding, that they would then discover their error, when it might be too late to prevent the remedy. Aroused by these warnings, and having heard the powerful reasons of Fra Giocondo, the Signori assembled a council of the most distinguished engineers and architects then to be found in Italy, by whom many opinions were given and various plans proposed; but that of Fra Giocondo was considered to be the best, and was selected to be put in execution. Thereupon was commenced the preparation of an immense excavation, by means of which it was proposed to divert from their course two-thirds, or at least the half, of the waters brought down by the river Brenta, these waters to be then conducted by a long bend to debouch in the lagoon of Chioggia; all which being done, this river no longer pouring its waters into the lagoon at Venice, has not brought down the earth, which might have filled them, as it has filled the lagoons of Chioggia, which it has choked up and filled in such sort, that where the waters formerly were, are now good lands