Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/276

268 Excellency should seek to found some memorial whereby himself and his actions should in like manner be made known and immortalized to all future times. And this he did because, having brought the monument of the Signor Giovanni near to its conclusion, he was considering how he might best proceed to make Duke Cosimo begin another great and expensive work, which should take a long time to execute. Now the Duke had ceased to inhabit the Palazzo de’ Medici, and had returned with his court to occupy the palace of the Piazza, which had formerly been held by the Signoria. This last he was now therefore daily adorning and re-arranging, and having said to Baccio that he would willingly erect a public audience-chamber, as well for the reception of foreign ambassadors as for the convenience of his own citizens and the subjects of the state, Bandinelli, taking council with Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo, began contriving how the Duke might be persuaded' into permitting the formation of an ornamental compartment in the hall itself, to be constructed in hewn stone and marbles, the erection to be thirty braccia wide and eighteen high. This they proposed to make serve for the audience-chamber, and would have it constructed in the great hall, as we have said, at that end namely which looks towards the north.

To the audience-chamber thus erected, they proposed to give a platform fourteen braccia wide, the ascent to which should be by seven broad steps, and the front whereof was to be closed by means of a balustrade, leaving open the centre only, where the entrance was to be. At the end of the hall were then to be made three large arches, two of which were to serve as windows, and were to be divided by four columns, two of cut stone and two of marble for each; over these was to be another arch of a round form, decorated with a frieze and range of corbels; and these were to constitute the ornament of the external façade of the palace, as well as of the interior of the hall. But the middle arch, which was not a window but a niche, was to be accompanied by two similar niches, which were to be formed at the two ends of the audience-chamber, the one to the east, and the other to the west that is to say, and each adorned with four Corinthian columns ten braccia high, and with a projecting cornice.