ort time before, as a more stable and enduring ornament, not without
singular ingenuity, that ancient and immense column of oriental granite
which had been taken from the Baths of Antoninus in Rome, and granted by
Pius IV to our glorious Duke, and by him conveyed, although at no little
expense, to Florence, and magnanimously presented to her as a courteous
gift for her public adornment. Upon that column, over its beautiful
capital, which had, like the base, the appearance of bronze, and which
is now being made of real bronze, there was placed a statue (of clay,
indeed, but in the colour of porphyry, because even so it is to be),
very large and very excellent, of a woman in full armour, with a helmet
on the head, and representing, by the sword in the right hand and by the
scales in the left, an incorruptible and most valorous Justice.

OF THE CANTO DE' TORNAQUINCI.

The sixth ornament was erected at the Canto de' Tornaquinci; and here I
must note a thing which would appear incredible to one who had not seen
it--namely, that this ornament was so magnificent, so rich in pomp, and
fashioned with so much art and grandeur, that, although it was conjoined
with the superb Palace of the Strozzi, which is such as to make the
greatest things appear as nothing, and although on a site altogether
disastrous by reason of the uneven ends of the streets that run together
there, and certain other inconvenient circumstances, nevertheless such
was the excellence of the craftsman, and so well conceived the manner of
the work, that it seemed as if all those difficulties had been brought
together there for the purpose of rendering it the more admirable and
the more beautiful; that most lovely palace being so well accompanied by
the richness of the ornaments, the height of the arches, the grandeur of
the columns, all intertwined with arms and trophies, and the great
statues that towered over the summit of the whole structure, that anyone
would have judged that neither that ornament required any other
accompaniment than that of such a palace, nor such a palace required any
other ornament. And to the end that all may be the better understood,
and in order to show more clearly and distinctly in what manner the work
was constructed, it is necessary that some measure of pardon should be
granted to us by those who are not of our arts, if for the sake of those
who delight in them we proceed, more minutely than might appear proper
to the others, to