Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/425

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San Marino likewise prepared numerous plans and designs for various parts of his Excellency’s States, and especially for the different fortifications; he made sketches and models in clay moreover, all which are now in possession of the Signor Duke. Endowed with considerable ability, and very zealous in study, Giovan-Battista wrote a small book on the subject of fortifications, which is a good and useful work: it is now in the possession of Messer Bernardo Puccini, a Florentine gentleman, who was the intimate friend of this San Marino, from whom he acquired much knowledge of matters connected with architecture and fortification.

In the year 1554, and after Giovan-Battista had designed many bastions to be added to the walls which rise around the city of Florence, and some of which were already in a forward state of progress; after having done this, I say, San Marino accompanied the Illustrious Signor, Don Garzia di Toledo, to Monte Alcino, where he formed trenches; and having mined his way beneath a bastion, he dislodged the same to such an extent, that he threw down the breastwork, but at the moment of its fall was himself struck by a musket ball, and wounded in the thigh. Some time afterwards, and when his wound had been cured, Giovan-Battista repaired secretly to Siena, there to take the plan of the city and of the earth-works, which had been constructed by the Sienese at the gate of Camollia. This plan of the fortifications he afterwards laid before the Signor Duke and the Marquis of Marignano, showing them, in the clearest manner, that it would be in nowise difficult for them to make themselves masters of that portion of the defences, when they might easily hold it also, and could thus press the city from that side of the works which looks towards Siena. The truth of all which was made manifest on the night when those works were taken by the above-mentioned Marquis, whom GiovanBattista had attended in his operations, by the orders of, and with a commission from the Duke.

That success caused the Marquis to set great store by San Marino, and, perceiving that he should have much need of his judgment and ability in the field, during the war with Siena that is to say, he so laboured with the Duke, that his Excellency at length despatched San Marino to the General, according to his desire, and with a commission as captain of