nvested by his father Rudolph with the sovereignty of Austria, and gave
to that most noble house the arms that are still to be seen at the
present day. Those arms used formerly to be five little larks on a gold
ground, whereas the new arms, which, as everyone may see, are all red
with a white band that divides them, are said to have been introduced by
him in that form because, as was seen painted there in a great picture
beneath his feet, he found himself not otherwise in that most bloody
battle fought by him with Adolf, who had been first deposed from the
Imperial throne, when the said Albert was seen to slay Adolf valorously
with his own hand and to win from him the Spolia Opima; and since, save
for the middle of his person, which was white on account of his armour,
over all the rest he found himself on that day all stained and dabbled
with blood, he ordained that in memory of that his arms should be
painted in the same manner both of form and colour, and that they should
be preserved gloriously after him by his successors in that house; and
beneath the picture, as with the others, there was to be read a similar
inscription that said:

ALBERTUS I IMP. ADOLPHUM, CUI LEGIBUS IMPERIUM ABROGATUM FUERAT,
MAGNO PROELIO VINCIT ET SPOLIA OPIMA REFERT.

And since each of the eight above-mentioned Emperors, besides the arms
common to their whole house, also used during his lifetime arms private
and peculiar to himself, for that reason, in order to make it more
manifest to the beholders which Emperor each of the statues represented,
there were also placed beneath their feet, on most beautiful shields,
the particular arms that each, as has been told, had borne. All which,
together with some pleasing and well-accommodated little scenes that
were painted on the pedestals, made a magnificent, heroic, and very
ornate effect; even as not less was done, on the columns and in all the
parts where ornaments could be suitably placed, in addition to trophies
and the arms, by the Crosses of S. Andrew, the Fusils, and the Pillars
of Hercules, with the motto, PLUS ULTRA, the principal device of that
arch, and many others like it used by the men of that Imperial family.

Such, then, was the principal view which presented itself to those who
chose to pass by the direct way with the procession; but for those who
came from the opposite direction, from the Via de' Tornabuoni towards
the Tornaquinci, there appeared, with an ornamentation