and Lorenzo the Magnificent (1450-1492); then, outside: Orcagna;
Andrea Pisano, of the first Baptistery doors; Giotto and Donatello;
Alberti, who could do everything and who designed the facade of
S. Maria Novella; Leonardo and Michelangelo. Next, three poets, Dante
(1265-1321), Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), and Giovanni Boccaccio
(1313-1375). Then Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), the statesman,
and Francesco Guicciardini (1482-1540), the historian. That completes
the first side.

At the end are Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1516), the explorer, who gave
his name to America, and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), the astronomer;
and above is Cosimo I, the first Grand Duke.

On the Uffizi's river facade are four figures only--and hundreds of
swallows' nests. The figures are Francesco Ferrucci, who died in 1530,
the general painted by Piero di Cosimo in our National Gallery, who
recaptured Volterra from Pope Clement VII in 1529; Giovanni delle Bande
Nere (1500-1527), father of Cosimo I, and a great fighting man; Piero
Capponi, who died in 1496, and delivered Florence from Charles VIII in
1494, by threatening to ring the city bells; and Farinata degli Uberti,
an earlier soldier, who died in 1264 and is in the "Divina Commedia"
as a hero. It was he who repulsed the Ghibelline suggestion that
Florence should be destroyed and the inhabitants emigrate to Empoli.

Working back towards the Loggia de' Lanzi we find less-known names:
Pietro Antonio Michele (1679-1737), the botanist; Francesco Redi
(1626-1697), a poet and a man of science; Paolo Mascagni (1732-1815),
the anatomist; Andrea Cesalpino (1519-1603), the philosopher;
S. Antonio (died 1461), Prior of the Convent of S. Marco and Archbishop
of Florence; Francesco Accorso (1182-1229), the jurist; Guido Aretino
(eleventh century), musician; and Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1572),
the goldsmith and sculptor. The most notable omissions are Arnolfo
and Brunelleschi (but these are, as we have seen, on the facade of
the Palazzo de' Canonici, opposite the south side of the cathedral),
Ghiberti, Fra Angelico, and Savonarola. Personally I should like to
have still others here, among them Giorgio Vasari, in recognition
of his enthusiastic and entertaining biographies of the Florentine
artists, to say nothing of the circumstance that he designed this
building.

Before we enter any Florentine gallery let me say that there is only
one free day and that the crowded Sabbath. Admittance to nearly all i