se and other cornices made for
another range of lights, there is a large inscription, very beautifully
carved in marble. Below, between the four columns, forming the ceiling
of the chapel, there is a coffer-work canopy of marble all carved, full
of enamels fired in a furnace and of various fanciful designs in mosaic
wrought with gold colour and precious stones. The surface of the
pavement is full of porphyry, serpentine, variegated marbles, and other
very rare stones, put together and distributed with beautiful design.
The said chapel is enclosed by a grille made of bronze ropes, with
candelabra above fixed into an ornament of marble, which makes a very
beautiful finish to the bronze and to the candelabra; and the door which
closes the chapel in front is likewise of bronze and very well
contrived. Piero left orders that the chapel should be lighted all round
by thirty silver lamps, and this was done. Now, as these were ruined
during the siege, the Lord Duke gave orders many years ago that new ones
should be made, and the greater part of them are already finished, while
the work still goes on; but in spite of this there has never been a
moment when there has not been that full number of lamps burning,
according to the instructions of Piero, although, from the time when
they were destroyed, they have not been of silver. To these adornments
Pagno added a very large lily of copper, issuing from a vase which rests
on the corner of the gilt and painted cornice of wood which holds the
lamps; but this cornice does not support so great a weight by itself,
for the whole is sustained by two branches of the lily, which are of
iron painted green, and are fixed with lead into the corner of the
marble cornice, holding those that are of copper suspended in the air.
This work was truly made with judgment and invention; wherefore it is
worthy of being much extolled as something beautiful and bizarre. Beside
this chapel, he made another on the side towards the cloister, which
serves as a choir for the friars, with windows which take their light
from the court and give it both to the said chapel and also (since they
stand opposite to two similar windows) to the room containing the little
organ, which is by the side of the marble chapel. On the front of this
choir there is a large press, in which the silver vessels of the
Nunziata are kept; and on all these ornaments and throughout the whole
are the arms and emblem of the Medici. Without the