er some that had pleased him, the better to be
able to proceed to accommodate all the apartments according to his
pleasure, and to change and put straight the old stairs, which appeared
to him too steep, ill-conceived, and badly made. To which work I set my
hand, although it seemed to me a difficult enterprise and beyond my
powers, and I executed as best I could a very large model, which is now
in the possession of his Excellency; more to obey him than with any hope
that I might succeed. That model, when it was finished, pleased him
much, whether by his good fortune or mine, or because of the great
desire that I had to give satisfaction; whereupon I set my hand to
building, and little by little, doing now one thing and now another, the
work has been carried to the condition wherein it may now be seen. And
while the rest was being done, I decorated with very rich stucco-work in
a varied pattern of compartments the first eight of the new rooms that
are on a level with the Great Hall, what with saloons, chambers, and a
chapel, with various pictures and innumerable portraits from life that
come in the scenes, beginning with the elder Cosimo, and calling each
room by the name of some great and famous person descended from him. In
one, then, are the most notable actions of that Cosimo and those virtues
that were most peculiar to him, with his greatest friends and servants
and portraits of his children, all from life; and so, also, that of the
elder Lorenzo, that of his son, Pope Leo, that of Pope Clement, that of
Signor Giovanni, the father of our great Duke, and that of the Lord
Duke Cosimo himself. In the chapel is a large and very beautiful picture
by the hand of Raffaello da Urbino, between a S. Cosimo and a S. Damiano
painted by my hand, to whom that chapel is dedicated. Then in like
manner in the upper rooms painted for the Lady Duchess Leonora, which
are four, are actions of illustrious women, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and
Tuscan, one to each chamber. But of these, besides that I have spoken of
them elsewhere, there will be a full account in the Dialogue which I am
about to give to the world, as I have said; for to describe everything
here would have taken too long.

For all these my labours, continuous, difficult, and great as they were,
I was rewarded largely and richly by the magnanimous liberality of the
great Duke, in addition to my salaries, with donations and with
commodious and honourable houses both in Florence and