unt, and on this subject I shall enlarge no further; but I must
say something as to the nature of these girandole. The whole
structure, then, is of wood, with broad compartments radiating
outwards from the foot, to the end that the rockets, when they have
been lighted, may not set fire to the other fireworks, but may rise in
due order from their separate places, one after another, filling the
heavens in proper succession with the fire that blazes in the
girandola both above and below. They are distributed, I say, at wide
intervals, to the end that they may not burn all at once, and may
produce a beautiful effect; and the same do the mortars, which are
bound to the firm parts of the girandola, and make the most beautiful
and joyous noises. The fire-trumpets, likewise, are fitted in among
the ornaments, and are generally contrived so as to discharge through
the mouths of masks and other suchlike things. But the most important
point is to arrange the girandola in such a manner that the lights
that burn in certain vases may last the whole night, and illuminate
the piazza; wherefore the whole work is connected together by a simple
match of tow steeped in a mixture of powder full of sulphur and
aquavitae, which creeps little by little with its fire to every part
which it has to set alight, one after another, until it has kindled
the whole. Now, as I have said, the things represented are various,
but all must have something to do with fire, and must be subject to
its action; and long before this there had been counterfeited the city
of Sodom, with Lot and his daughters flying from it, at another time
Geryon, with Virgil and Dante on his back, according as Dante himself
relates in the _Inferno_, and even earlier Orpheus bringing Eurydice
with him from those infernal regions, with many other inventions. And
his Excellency ordained that the work should not be given to any of
the puppet-painters, who for many years past had made a thousand
absurdities in the girandole, but that an excellent master should
produce a work that might have in it something of the good; wherefore
the charge of this was given to Tribolo, who, with the ingenuity and
art wherewith he had executed all his other works, made one in the
form of a very beautiful octagonal temple, rising with its ornaments
to the total height of twenty braccia. This temple he represented as
the Temple of Peace, placing on the summit an image of Peace, who was
setting fire to a gre