ite.

Finally, there have been accepted into the Academy some young sculptors
who executed honourable and praiseworthy works in the above-named
preparations for the nuptials of his Highness; and these were Fra
Giovanni Vincenzio of the Servites, a disciple of Fra Giovanni Agnolo;
Ottaviano del Collettaio, a pupil of Zanobi Lastricati, and Pompilio
Lancia, the son of Baldassarre da Urbino, architect and pupil of
Girolamo Genga; which Pompilio, in the masquerade called the Genealogy
of the Gods, arranged for the most part, and particularly the mechanical
contrivances, by the said Baldassarre, his father, acquitted himself in
certain things excellently well.

In these last pages we have shown at some length what kind of men, and
how many and how able, have been gathered together to form so noble an
Academy, and we have touched in part on the many and honourable
occasions obtained by them from their most liberal lords, wherein to
display their capacity and ability. Nevertheless, to the end that this
may be the better understood, although those first learned writers, in
their descriptions of the arches and of the various spectacles
represented in those splendid nuptials, made it very well known, yet,
since there has been given into my hands the following little work,
written by way of exercise by a person of leisure who delights not a
little in our profession, to a dear and close friend who was not able to
see those festivities, forming the most brief account and comprising
everything in one, it has seemed to me my duty, for the satisfaction of
my brother-craftsmen, to insert it in this volume, adding to it a few
words, to the end that it may be more easy, by thus uniting rather than
separating it, to preserve an honourable record of their noble labours.

OF THE ACADEMICIANS

OF THE ACADEMICIANS

DESCRIPTION OF THE FESTIVE PREPARATIONS FOR THE NUPTIALS OF THE PRINCE
DON FRANCESCO OF TUSCANY

DESCRIPTION OF THE PORTA AL PRATO

We will describe, then, with the greatest clearness and brevity that may
be permitted by the abundance of our material, how the intention in all
these decorations was to represent by the vast number of pictures and
sculptures, as if in life, all those ceremonies, effects, and pomps that
appeared to be proper to the reception and the nuptials of so great a
Princess, forming of them poetically and ingeniously a whole so well
proportioned, that with judgment and grace it might achieve