ting them and to directing
their affairs to the aggrandizement, embellishment, and ornamentation
of the church, the city, and the public square (a thing never yet done
by any other in that office), he provided them with various
advantages, profits, and revenues by means of his inventions, with his
ingenuity of brain and readiness of spirit, yet always with little or
no expense to the Signori themselves. Among which benefits, one was
this; in the year 1529 there were between the two columns in the
Piazza some butchers' stalls, and also between the one column and the
other many wooden cabins to accommodate persons in their natural
necessities--a thing most filthy and disgraceful, both for the dignity
of the Palace and of the Piazza Pubblica, and for the strangers who,
coming into Venice by way of S. Giorgio, saw first of all on arrival
that filthiness. Jacopo, after demonstrating to the Prince Gritti the
honourable and profitable nature of his design, caused those stalls
and cabins to be removed; and, placing the stalls where they now are
and making certain places for the sellers of herbs, he obtained for
the Procurators an additional revenue of seven hundred ducats,
embellishing at the same time the Piazza and the city. Not long
afterwards, having perceived that in the Merceria (on the way to the
Rialto, near the Clock), by removing a house that paid a rent of
twenty-six ducats, a street could be made leading into the Spadaria,
whereby the rent of the houses and shops all around would be
increased, he threw down that house and increased their revenues by
one hundred and fifty ducats a year. Besides this, by placing on that
site the hostelry of the Pellegrino and another in the Campo Rusolo,
he brought them in another four hundred ducats. He obtained for them
similar benefits by the buildings in the Pescaria, and, on divers
other occasions, by many houses and shops and other places belonging
to those Signori, at various times; insomuch that the Procurators,
having gained by his care a revenue of more than two thousand ducats,
have been rightly moved to love him and to hold him dear.

Not long afterwards, by order of the Procurators, he set his hand to
the very rich and beautiful building of the Library opposite to the
Palazzo Pubblico, with such a variety of architecture (for it is both
Doric and Corinthian), and such a wealth of carvings, cornices,
columns, capitals, and half-length figures throughout the whole work,
th