ornaments, making the doors
correspond with one another. He also made there in marble the arms of
the above-named Pope Paul Farnese, or rather, where they had
previously been made of balls for Pope Clement, who had carried out
that work, Mosca was forced--and he succeeded excellently well--to
make lilies out of the balls in relief, and thus to change the arms of
the Medici into those of the house of Farnese; notwithstanding, as I
have said (for so do things go in this world), that the author of that
vast, regal, and magnificent work was Pope Clement VII, of whom in
this last and most imposing part no mention whatever was made.

[Illustration: THE ALTAR OF THE THREE KINGS

(_After =Simone Mosca= and =Michele San Michele=. Orvieto: Duomo_)

_Alinari_]

While Simone was engaged in finishing this well, the Wardens of Works
of S. Maria, the Duomo of Orvieto, desiring to give completion to
the chapel of marble that had been carried as far as the socle under
the direction of Michele San Michele of Verona, with some carvings,
besought Simone, whom they had come to know as a master of true
excellence, that he should attend to it. Whereupon they came to terms,
and Simone, liking the society of the people of Orvieto, brought his
family thither, in order to live in greater comfort; and then he set
himself to work with a quiet and composed mind, being greatly honoured
by everyone in that place. When, therefore, as it were by way of
sample, he had made a beginning with some pilasters and friezes, the
excellence and ability of Simone were recognized by those men, and
there was assigned to him a salary of two hundred crowns of gold a
year, and with this, continuing to labour, he carried that work well
forward. Now in the centre, to fill up the ornaments, there was to go
a scene of marble in half-relief, representing the Adoration of the
Magi; and there was summoned at the suggestion of Simone his very dear
friend Raffaello da Montelupo, the Florentine sculptor, who, as has
been related, executed half of that scene in a very beautiful manner.
In the ornamentation of this chapel, then, are certain socles, each
two and a half braccia in breadth, which are on either side of the
altar, and upon these are pilasters five braccia high, two on either
side, between which is the story of the Magi; and on the pilasters
next to the story, of which two of the faces are seen, are carved some
candelabra, with friezes of grotesques, masks, little