Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/15

Rh so close to the river, and their having done so proves that there was but little discretion in those who were then chief of the Florentine nation in Rome. It is certain that architects should never be permitted to found a church of such extent in a river so violent, for the mere sake of obtaining some twenty braccia of length, thereby casting away so many thousands of scudi for no better purpose than that of having ever afterwards to maintain an eternal combat with the waters.

These rulers were besides all the more to blame, because they might very easily have raised their church on land had they been willing to extend their limits in another direction, and agreed to give the building a different form, nay, what is more, they might have almost brought the whole to completion at the cost here expended so injudiciously. But if those who governed the affair put their trust in the riches possessed by the merchants of that nation, they were taught in good time the perfect fallacy of their hopes, since in all the years that the papal throne was held by Leo X. by Clemente de’ Medici, by Julius III., and by Marcellus (although the latter it is true occupied it but a short time), all of whom were of the Florentine people;—through all the time of these pontiffs, I say, and notwithstanding the greatness of so many cardinals and the riches of so many merchants, the building has remained, and still remains at the same point wherein it wras left by our San Gallo. It is manifest therefore, that architects, and all else who have to do with the erection of buildings, should think much and well of the end, taking every thing carefully into consideration, before they lay hands on a work of importance.

But to return to Antonio: this architect restored the Fortress of Monte Fiascone, which had been constructed by Pope Urban, and for the restoration of which he received commission from the Pontiff, who took him to those parts