isit from him, the moment that Buonarroti entered the Prince rose to
his feet, and then, in order to do honour to that great man and to his
truly venerable age, with the greatest courtesy that ever young Prince
showed, insisted--although Michelagnolo, who was very modest,
protested against it--that he should sit in his own chair, from which
he had risen, standing afterwards on his feet to hear him with the
attention and reverence that children are wont to pay to a
well-beloved father. At the feet of the Prince was a boy, executed
with great diligence, who had in his hands a mazzocchio,[6] or Ducal
cap, and around them were some soldiers dressed in ancient fashion,
and painted with much spirit and a beautiful manner; but beyond all
the rest, most beautifully wrought, most lifelike and most natural
were the Prince and Michelagnolo, insomuch that it appeared as if the
old man were in truth speaking, and the young man most intently
listening to his words.

[Footnote 6: See note on p. 132, vol. ii.]

In another picture, nine braccia in height and twelve in length, which
was opposite to the Chapel of the Sacrament, Bernardo Timante
Buontalenti, a painter much beloved and favoured by the most
illustrious Prince, had figured with most beautiful invention the
Rivers of the three principal parts of the world, come, as it were,
all grieving and sorrowful, to lament with Arno on their common loss
and to console him; and these Rivers were the Nile, the Ganges, and
the Po. The Nile had as a symbol a crocodile, and, to signify the
fertility of his country, a garland of ears of corn; the Ganges, a
gryphon-bird and a chaplet of gems; the Po, a swan and a crown of
black amber. These Rivers, having been conducted into Tuscany by the
Fame, who was to be seen on high, as it were in flight, were standing
round Arno, who was crowned with cypress and held his vase, drained
empty, uplifted with one hand, and in the other a branch of cypress,
and beneath him was a lion. And, to signify that the soul of
Michelagnolo had flown to the highest felicity in Heaven, the
judicious painter had depicted in the air a Splendour representing the
celestial light, towards which the blessed soul, in the form of a
little Angel, was winging its way; with this lyric verse:

VIVENS ORBE PETO LAUDIBUS AETHERA.

At the sides, upon two bases, were two figures in the act of holding
open a curtain within which, so it appeared, were the above-named
Rivers