Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 3.djvu/97

Rh Office of Registers. Opposite to this, and on the side towards the west, was an Altar, whereon Mass was read, with a picture from the hand of Fra Bartolommeo, as we have before said, and beside the Altar was the Oratory for Prayer. In the centre of the Flail were benches for the citizens; these were placed along the length and across the width of the building, and in the centre of the Tribune, as well as at the angles, were passages, each having six steps, for the use of the ushers and others, who were required by their offices to bring forward the different parties appearing before the magistrates. This Hall was at the time much commended, as having been erected with great promptitude, and, in some respects, with much judgment also; but time has since revealed its defects more clearly, and has shown it to be, as it is, low, dark, melancholy, and out of square. There are, nevertheless, many excuses to be made for II Cronaca and the rest, seeing that the citizens had hurried forward the work unduly, intending to have the Hall adorned with pictures, and the ceiling covered with gold: and also because there had at that time been no Hall so large erected in Italy, although there were some of great extent in that country; as, for example, the Flail of the Palace of San Marco in Rome, that of the Vatican, built by the Popes Pius H. and Innocent VIIL, with those of the Gastello in Naples, and the Palace in Milan, to say nothing of others existing in Urbino, Venice, and Padua.

At a later period, and aided by the counsels of the same masters, R Cronaca constructed a grand staircase, six braccia wide, to serve as the ascent into this Hall; these stairs he divided into two winding flights, each richly decorated in macigno stone, with Corinthian columns and capitals, double cornices and arches, all in the same stone. The vaultings were coved, the windows ornamented with columns of vein-coloured marble, and the capitals were also of marble, finely sculptured. This work was likewise much commended, but it would have been still more highly extolled, had the