Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/208

200 from the fountain to the garden, are four hoys in bronze, reclined and lying at play in various attitudes; and these, although subsequently executed by others, are likewise from the designs of Tribolo. Above the tazza just described, he then commenced another pedestal, on the lowermost part of which are four boys of marble in full relief, standing on ressaults, and pressing the necks of geese, from whose bills there pours water, and this water is that of the principal aqueduct, which comes from the labyrinth and rises exactly to the level of this point. Above these Boys rises the remainder of the shaft of this pedestal, which is formed into small tubes, whence the water streams in the most fanciful manner; where the pedestal resumes the quadrangular form, the ornament consists of masks, which are very well executed. On the summit of this pedestal there is then placed a smaller tazza, to the edge of which four heads of Capricorns are suspended by their horns: these throw water from their mouths into the larger tazza, to form the rain which falls, as we have said, into the first basin, or that with the eight sides.

Still higher, and rising over all, is another shaft decorated with various ornaments, among which are boys in mezzorilievo; they bend forwards to such an extent as to present a space sufficient for the base of a group representing Hercules strangling Antseus, and which was executed after the design of Tribolo, but by the hands of others, as I propose to relate hereafter. From the mouth of Antmus it was the intention of Tribolo that water in a large quantity should proceed, to represent the exhaling spirit; this water is that of the great aqueduct of the Petraia, which comes in great force and rises sixteen braccia above the level of the stages or steps, from which height, as it falls back into the larger tazza, the spectacle presented thereby is most admirable.

Through this aqueduct, moreover, there pass not only the waters of the Petraia, but also those which go to the lake and the grotto, and these, being united to the supplies from the Castellina, then proceed to the fountains of the Falterona and Monte Asinaio, wdience they flow on to those of the