he great saintliness, goodness and
gratitude of Pope Pius V, a Pontiff and Holy Father truly most
saintly, most blessed, and most worthy of long life.

Of Nanni di Baccio Bigio, a Florentine sculptor, besides what has been
said of him in other places, I have to record that in his youth, under
Raffaello da Montelupo, he applied himself in such a manner to
sculpture, that in some little things that he did in marble he gave
great promise that he would prove to be an able man. And having gone
to Rome, under the sculptor Lorenzetto, while he gave his attention as
his father had done also to architecture, he executed the statue of
Pope Clement VII, which is in the choir of the Minerva, and a Pieta of
marble, copied from that of Michelagnolo, which was placed in S. Maria
de Anima, the Church of the Germans, as a work that is truly very
beautiful. Another like it he made not long afterwards for Luigi del
Riccio, a Florentine merchant, which is now in S. Spirito at Florence,
in a chapel of that Luigi, who is no less extolled for such piety
towards his native city than is Nanni for having executed the statue
with much diligence and love. Nanni then applied himself under Antonio
da San Gallo with more study to architecture, and gave his attention,
while Antonio was alive, to the fabric of S. Pietro; where, falling
from a staging sixty braccia high, and shattering himself, he escaped
with his life by a miracle. Nanni has erected many edifices in Rome
and in the country round, and has sought to obtain even more, and
greater, as has been told in the Life of Michelagnolo. His work, also,
is the Palace of Cardinal Montepulciano on the Strada Giulia, and a
gate at Monte Sansovino built by order of Julius III, with a reservoir
for water that is not finished, and a loggia and other apartments of
the palace formerly built by the old Cardinal di Monte. And a work of
Nanni, likewise, is the house of the Mattei, with many other buildings
that have been erected or are still being constructed in Rome.

A famous and most celebrated architect, also, among others of the
present day, is Galeazzo Alessi of Perugia, who, serving in his youth
the Cardinal of Rimini, whose chamberlain he became, executed among
his first works, at the desire of that lord, the rebuilding of the
apartments in the Fortress of Perugia, with so many conveniences and
such beauty, that for a place so small it was a marvel, and many times
already they have accommodated the Pop