uccio de' Medici, who was gonfalonier in 1299, once reposed.
There too are Donatello's eight medallions, but they are not very
interesting, being only enlarged copies of old medals and cameos and
not notable for his own characteristics.

Hence it is that, after Gozzoli, by far the most interesting
part of this building is its associations. For here lived Cosimo
de' Medici, whose building of the palace was interrupted by his
banishment as a citizen of dangerous ambition; here lived Piero
de' Medici, for whom Gozzoli worked; here was born and here lived
Lorenzo the Magnificent. To this palace came the Pazzi conspirators
to lure Giuliano to the Duomo and his doom. Here did Charles
VIII--Savonarola's "Flagellum Dei"--lodge and loot, and it was here
that Capponi frightened him with the threat of the Florentine bells;
hither came in 1494 the fickle and terrible Florentine mob, always
passionate in its pursuit of change and excitement, and now inflamed
by the sermons of Savonarola, to destroy the priceless manuscripts
and works of art; here was brought up for a year or so the little
Catherine de' Medici, and next door was the house in which Alessandro
de' Medici was murdered.

It was in the seventeenth century that the palace passed to the
Riccardi family, who made many additions. A century later Florence
acquired it, and to-day it is the seat of the Prefect of the
city. Cosimo's original building was smaller; but much of it remains
untouched. The exquisite cornice is Michelozzo's original, and the
courtyard has merely lost its statues, among which are Donatello's
Judith, now in the Loggia de' Lanzi, and his bronze David, now in the
Bargello, while Verrocchio's David was probably on the stairs. The
escutcheon on the corner of the house gives us the period of its
erection. The seven plain balls proclaim it Cosimo's. Each of
the Medici sported these palle, although each had also his private
crest. Under Giovanni, Cosimo's father, the balls were eight in number;
under Cosimo, seven; under Piero, seven, with the fleur-de-lis of
France on the uppermost, given him by Louis XI; under Lorenzo, six;
and as one walks about Florence one can approximately fix the date of
a building by remembering these changes. How many times they occur on
the facades of Florence and its vicinity, probably no one could say;
but they are everywhere. The French wits, who were amused to derive
Catherine de' Medici from a family of apothecaries, called th