Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/201

Rh that they might be taken for a work of the pencil. In the centre of this labyrinth, Tribolo, by command of the Duke, erected a marble fountain of great beauty, of which further mention will be made immediately below. Before the principal entrance, there namely where are the firstmentioned lawns or meadows, with the two pieces of water and the avenue covered with its mulberries, Tribolo would have had the latter extended and covered in like manner for more than the length of a mile, thus affording a shaded walk even down to the shores of the river Arno, and he further desired that the waters which might remain after the fountains had been supplied, should be made to run gently on each side of the avenue, which they should in this manner accompany even to the river, being conducted in small canals, pleasantly enlivened by various kinds of fish.

For the palace itself—that I may thus relate what is intended to be done, as well as that which has been accomplished —Tribolo wished to construct a Loggia with an open court before it, at the extremity of which, and at that part where the stables are placed, he would then have erected a second palace, exactly similar to the earlier building, with the same number and proportion of apartments and Loggie, with a private garden and a garden on the heights, an addition which would have made that fabric a most extensive palace, and caused it to present a singularly beautiful front. Having passed the court from which you enter the large garden wherein is the labyrinth, you find at the entrance of the latter a very extensive lawn, and on ascending the steps which conduct to the labyrinth, a quadrangle of thirty braccia is discovered, on which there was to be, and has since been made, a very large fountain in white marble, the waters from which are to be thrown fourteen braccia above the highest point of the decorations; the summit of the fountain to be occupied by a figure, from whose mouth water is furthermore to arise to the height of six braccia.

At each end of the lawn a Loggia was to be erected, the one opposite to the other, and both having a length of thirty braccia, and a width of fifteen braccia. In the centre of each Loggia was to be placed a marble table twelve braccia long, and on the outer side a basin or reservoir of eight braccia, which was to receive water from a vase borne