dered beautiful and well
constructed in no common way the socles of the four great piers around
the eight sides of the tribune which support the four arches--namely,
three in the transepts, where the chapels are, and the larger one in the
central nave. This work certainly deserves to be celebrated as the best
that Antonio ever executed, and that not without sufficient reason,
seeing that those who erect some new building, or raise one from the
foundations, have the power to make it high or low, and to carry it to
such perfection as they desire or are able to achieve, without being
hindered by anything; which does not fall to the lot of him who has to
rectify or restore works begun by others and brought to a sorry state
either by the craftsman or by the circumstances of Fortune; whence it
may be said that Antonio restored a dead thing to life, and did that
which was scarcely possible. Having finished all this, he arranged that
the church should be covered with lead, and gave directions for the
execution of all that still remained to do; and thus, by his means,
that famous temple received a better form and more grace than it had
possessed before, and the hope of a long-enduring life.

He then returned to Rome, just after that city had been given over to
sack; and the Pope was at Orvieto, where the Court was suffering very
greatly from want of water. Thereupon, at the wish of the Pontiff,
Antonio built in that city a well all of stone, twenty-five braccia
wide, with two spiral staircases cut in the tufa, one above the other,
following the curve of the well. By these two spiral staircases it is
possible to descend to the bottom of the well, insomuch that the animals
that go there for water, entering by one door, go down by one of the two
staircases, and when they have come to the platform where they receive
their load of water, they pass, without turning round, into the other
branch of the spiral staircase, which winds above that of the descent,
and emerge from the well by a different door, opposite to the other.
This work, which was an ingenious, useful, and marvellously beautiful
thing, was carried almost to completion before the death of Clement; and
the mouth of the well, which alone remained to be executed, was finished
by order of Pope Paul III, but not according to the directions drawn up
by Clement with the advice of Antonio, who was much commended for so
beautiful a work. Certain it is that the ancients never built