Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 5.djvu/565

Rh end of the same, larger and richer than any that had ever been made before: finally, I had to construct the principal staircases of the Palace, with their vestibules, the court, and the columns, in that manner which every one may see, and which has been described above. To all which must be added fifteen pictures, representing that number of cities belonging to the Empire and the Tyrol; all being copies from the places described.

Nor has the time that I have given to the putting forward of the Loggia, and to the great Fabric for the magistrates, been of unimportant duration, since I commenced the same j for this building, which looks on the Arno, is one of the most difficult and dangerous that I have ever erected, seeing that its foundations have had to be laid in the river; and it may be almost called an edifice constructed in the air. But it was not possible to avoid doing as we have done, since, to say nothing of other causes, the great corridor, which, crossing the Arno, proceeds from the ducal Palace to the Palace and Gardens of the Pitti, had to be appended to the fabric above-named. That corridor, too, was completed under my directions, and with my designs, within the space of five months, although it is a work which one might imagine unlikely to be finished in less than five years.

There was, besides, committed to my care the charge of causing to be reconstructed and enlarged, for those nuptials, that machinery which had been used for the festivities solemnized in the great Tribune of the church of Santo.

Spirito, and which had formerly been held at San Felice in Piazza; all which was brought to such perfection as could be attained, insomuch that the dangers formerly incurred at those festivals are no longer to be feared. The Palace and Church erected for the Knights of San Stefano in Pisa, is also a work of mine; as is likewise the completion of the