of Pisa on one side, and on
the other likewise the beginning and end of the War of Siena, one
carried on and concluded by the popular government in a period of
fourteen years, and the other by the Duke in fourteen months, as may be
seen; besides all the rest that is on the ceiling and will be on the
walls, each eighty braccia in length and twenty in height, which I am
even now painting in fresco, and hope likewise to discuss later in the
above-mentioned Dialogue. And all this that I have sought to say
hitherto has been for no other cause but to show with what diligence I
have applied myself and still apply myself to matters of art, and with
what good reasons I could excuse myself if in some cases (which I
believe, indeed, are many) I have failed.

[Illustration: FRESCO IN THE HALL OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT

(_After =Giorgio Vasari=. Florence: Palazzo Vecchio_)

_Brogi_]

I will add, also, that about the same time I received orders to design
all the arches to be shown to his Excellency for the purpose of
determining the whole arrangement of the numerous festive preparations
already described, executed in Florence for the nuptials of the most
illustrious Lord Prince, of which I had then to carry into execution and
finish a great part; to cause to be painted after my designs, in ten
pictures each fourteen braccia high and eleven broad, all the squares of
the principal cities of the dominion, drawn in perspective with their
original builders and their devices; also, to have finished the
head-wall of the above-named Hall, begun by Bandinelli, and to have a
scene made for the other, the greatest and richest that was ever made by
anyone; and, finally, to execute the principal stairs of that Palace,
with their vestibules, the court and the columns, in the manner that
everyone knows and that has been described above, with fifteen cities of
the Empire and of the Tyrol depicted from the reality in as many
pictures. Not little, also, has been the time that I have spent in those
same days in pushing forward the construction, from the time when I
first began it, of the loggia and the vast fabric of the Magistrates,
facing towards the River Arno, than which I have never had built
anything more difficult or more dangerous, from its being founded over
the river, and even, one might say, in the air. But it was necessary,
besides other reasons, in order to attach to it, as has been done, the
great corridor which crosses the river and