which pours water into a very large
basin of the same stone; which figure is made of pieces, and put
together with such diligence and art, that it appears to be all of one
block. Tribolo then set his hand, at the command of his Excellency, to
attempting to finish the staircase of the library of S. Lorenzo--that,
namely, which is in the vestibule before the door; but after he had
placed four steps in position, not finding either the plan or the
measurements of Michelagnolo, by order of the Duke he went to Rome,
not only to hear the opinion of Michelagnolo with regard to that
staircase, but also to make an effort to bring him to Florence. But he
did not succeed either in the one object or in the other, for
Michelagnolo, not wishing to leave Rome, excused himself in a handsome
manner, and as for the staircase he declared that he remembered
neither the measurements nor anything else. Tribolo, therefore, having
returned to Florence, and not being able to continue the work of that
staircase, set himself to make the pavement of the said library with
white and red bricks, after the manner of some pavements that he had
seen in Rome; but he added a filling of red clay to the white clay
mixed with bole, in order to produce various effects of carving in
those bricks; and thus he made in that pavement a copy of the ceiling
and coffered work above--a notion that was highly extolled. He then
began, but did not finish, a work that was to be placed on the main
tower of the defences of the Porta a Faenza, for Don Giovanni di Luna,
the castellan at that time--namely, an escutcheon of grey-stone, and a
large eagle in full relief with two heads, which he made in wax to the
end that it might be cast in bronze, but nothing more was done with
it, and of the escutcheon only the shield was finished.

Now it was the custom in the city of Florence to have almost every
year on the principal piazza, on the evening of the festival of S.
John the Baptist, towards nightfall, a girandola--that is, a
contrivance full of fire-trumpets, rockets, and other fireworks; which
girandola had the form now of a temple, now of a ship, sometimes of
rocks, and at times of a city or of an inferno, according as it
pleased the designer; and one year the charge of making one was given
to Tribolo, who, as will be described below, made it very
beautifully. Of the various manners of these fireworks, and
particularly of set pieces, Vannoccio of Siena and others give an
acco