esco Rustici, represented a Tantalus in
Hell, who gave a feast to all the men of the Company clothed in the
dress of various Gods; with all the rest of the fable, and many fanciful
inventions of gardens, scenes of Paradise, fireworks, and other things,
to recount which would make our story too long. A very beautiful
invention, also, was that of Luigi Martelli, when, being master of the
Company, he gave them supper in the house of Giuliano Scali at the Porta
Pinti; for he represented Mars all smeared with blood, to signify his
cruelty, in a room full of bloody human limbs; in another room he showed
Mars and Venus naked in a bed, and a little farther on Vulcan, who,
having covered them with the net, was calling all the Gods to see the
outrage done to him by Mars and by his sorry spouse.

But it is now time--after this digression, which may perchance appear to
some too long, although for many reasons it does not seem to me that
this account has been given wholly out of place--that I return to the
Life of Rustici. Giovan Francesco, then, not liking much to live in
Florence after the expulsion of the Medici in the year 1528, left the
charge of all his affairs to Niccolo Buoni, and went off with his young
man Lorenzo Naldini, called Guazzetto, to France, where, having been
made known to King Francis by Giovan Battista della Palla, who happened
to be there then, and by Francesco di Pellegrino, his very dear friend,
who had gone there a short time before, he was received very willingly,
and an allowance of five hundred crowns a year was granted to him. By
that King, for whom Giovan Francesco executed some works of which
nothing in particular is known, he was finally commissioned to make a
horse in bronze, twice the size of life, upon which was to be placed the
King himself. Whereupon, having set his hand to the work, after some
models which much pleased the King, he went on with the making of the
large model and the mould for casting it, in a large palace given to him
for his enjoyment by the King. But, whatever may have been the reason,
the King died before the work was finished; and since at the beginning
of Henry's reign many persons had their allowances taken away and the
expenses of the Court were cut down, it is said that Giovan Francesco,
now old and not very prosperous, had nothing to live upon save the
profit that he made by letting the great palace and dwelling that he
had received for his own enjoyment from the libera