ways sees all those who are climbing,
those who are climbing see those who are on the ground, and those who
are halfway up see both the first and the second--that is, those who are
above and those who are below. This fanciful invention, with better
method and more just proportions, and with more adornment, was
afterwards put into execution by the architect Bramante in the Belvedere
in Rome, for Pope Julius II, and by Antonio da San Gallo in the well
that is at Orvieto, by order of Pope Clement VII, as will be told when
the time comes.

But returning to Niccola, who was no less excellent as sculptor than as
architect; in the facade of the Church of S. Martino in Lucca, under the
portico that is above the lesser door, on the left as one enters into
the church, where there is seen a Christ Deposed from the Cross, he made
a marble scene in half-relief, all full of figures wrought with much
diligence, having hollowed out the marble and finished the whole in a
manner that gave hope to those who were previously working at the art
with very great difficulty, that there soon should come one who, with
more facility, would give them better assistance. The same Niccola, in
the year 1240, gave the design for the Church of S. Jacopo in Pistoia,
and put to work there in mosaic certain Tuscan masters who made the
vaulting of the choir-niche, which, although in those times it was held
as something difficult and of great cost, moves us to-day rather to
laughter and to compassion than to marvel, and all the more because such
confusion, which comes from lack of design, existed not only in Tuscany
but throughout all Italy, where many buildings and other works, that
were being wrought without method and without design, give us to know no
less the poverty of their talents than the unmeasured riches wasted by
the men of those times, by reason of their having had no masters who
might execute in a good manner any work that they might do.

Niccola, then, by means of the works that he was making in sculpture and
in architecture, was going on ever acquiring a greater name than the
sculptors and architects who were then working in Romagna, as can be
seen in S. Ippolito and S. Giovanni of Faenza, in the Duomo of Ravenna,
in S. Francesco, in the houses of the Traversari, and in the Church
of Porto; and at Rimini, in the fabric of the public buildings, in the
houses of the Malatesti, and in other buildings, which are all much
worse than the old edific