nd
40,000 ducats in one year alone, if she lived, in order to see it, if
not finished, at least well on the way to completion. And because the
model of Filippo has not been found, his Excellency has caused
Bartolommeo Ammanati, an excellent sculptor and architect, to make
another, according to which the work is being carried on; and a great
part of the courtyard is already completed in rustic work, similar to
the exterior. And in truth, if one considers the grandeur of this work,
one marvels how the mind of Filippo could conceive so great an edifice,
which is truly magnificent not only in the external facade, but also in
the distribution of all the apartments. I say nothing of the view, which
is most beautiful, and of the kind of theatre formed by the most lovely
hills that rise round the palace in the direction of the walls, because,
as I have said, it would take too long to try to describe them in full,
nor could anyone, without seeing this palace, imagine how greatly
superior it is to any other royal edifice whatsoever.

It is also said that the machinery for the "Paradise" of S. Felice in
Piazza, in the said city, was invented by Filippo in order to hold the
Representation, or rather, the Festival of the Annunciation, in the
manner wherein the Florentines were wont to hold it in that place in
olden times. This was truly something marvellous, demonstrating the
genius and the industry of him who was its inventor, for the reason that
there was seen on high a Heaven full of living figures in motion, with
an infinity of lights appearing and disappearing almost in a flash. Now
I do not wish to grudge the labour of giving an exact description of the
machinery of that engine, seeing that it has all disappeared and that
the men who could speak of it from personal knowledge are dead, so that
there is no hope of its being reconstructed, that place being inhabited
no longer by the Monks of Camaldoli, but by the Nuns of S. Pier Martire;
and above all since the one in the Carmine has been destroyed, because
it was pulling down the rafters that support the roof.

For this purpose, then, Filippo had suspended, between two of the beams
that supported the roof of the church, the half of a globe in the shape
of an empty bowl, or rather, of a barber's basin, with the rim
downwards; this half-globe was made of thin and light planks fastened to
a star of iron which radiated round the curve of the said half-globe,
and these planks narrow