and crowned, and at the foot the Apostles around the Sepulchre. For the
Black Friars of the Badia of Florence, likewise, I am painting an
altar-piece of the Assumption of Our Lady, which is near completion,
with the Apostles in figures larger than life, and other figures at the
sides, and around it stories and ornaments accommodated in a novel
manner. And since the Lord Duke, so truly excellent in everything, takes
pleasure not only in the building of palaces, cities, fortresses,
harbours, loggie, public squares, gardens, fountains, villas, and other
suchlike things, beautiful, magnificent, and most useful, for the
benefit of his people, but also particularly in building anew and
reducing to better form and greater beauty, as a truly Catholic Prince,
the temples and sacred churches of God, in imitation of the great King
Solomon, recently he has caused me to remove the tramezzo[5] of the
Church of S. Maria Novella, which had robbed it of all its beauty, and
a new and very rich choir was made behind the high-altar, in order to
remove that occupying a great part of the centre of that church; which
makes it appear a new church and most beautiful, as indeed it is. And
because things that have not order and proportion among themselves can
never be entirely beautiful, he has ordained that there shall be made in
the side-aisles, between column and column, in such a manner as to
correspond to the centres of the arches, rich ornaments of stone in a
novel form, which are to serve as chapels with altars in the centre, and
are all to be in one of two manners; and that then in the altar-pictures
that are to go within these ornaments, seven braccia in height and five
in breadth, there shall be executed paintings after the will and
pleasure of the patrons of the chapels. Within one of those ornaments of
stone, made from my design, I have executed for the very reverend
Monsignor Alessandro Strozzi, Bishop of Volterra, my old and most loving
patron, a Christ Crucified according to the Vision of S. Anselm--namely,
with the Seven Virtues, without which we cannot ascend the Seven Steps
to Jesus Christ--and with other considerations by the same Saint. And in
the same church, within another of those ornaments, I have painted for
the excellent Maestro Andrea Pasquali, physician to the Lord Duke, a
Resurrection of Jesus Christ in the manner that God has inspired me, to
please that Maestro Andrea, who is much my friend. And a similar work
our grea