thought it my duty to make every effort that on the occasion of such
festivities that Hall, which was the principal apartment of the Palace
and the one wherein the most important ceremonies were to be celebrated,
might be available for enjoyment. And here I will leave it to the
judgment of everyone not only in our arts but also outside them, if only
he has seen the greatness and variety of that work, to decide whether
the extraordinary importance of the occasion should not be my excuse if
in such haste I have not given complete satisfaction in so great a
variety of wars on land and sea, stormings of cities, batteries,
assaults, skirmishes, buildings of cities, public councils, ceremonies
ancient and modern, triumphs, and so many other things, for which, not
to mention anything else, the sketches, designs, and cartoons of so
great a work required a very long time. I will not speak of the nude
bodies, in which the perfection of our arts consists, or of the
landscapes wherein all those things were painted, all which I had to
copy from nature on the actual site and spot, even as I did with the
many captains, generals and other chiefs, and soldiers, that were in the
emprises that I painted. In short, I will venture to say that I had
occasion to depict on that ceiling almost everything that human thought
and imagination can conceive; all the varieties of bodies, faces,
vestments, habiliments, casques, helmets, cuirasses, various
head-dresses, horses, harness, caparisons, artillery of every kind,
navigations, tempests, storms of rain and snow, and so many other
things, that I am not able to remember them. But anyone who sees the
work may easily imagine what labours and what vigils I endured in
executing with the greatest study in my power about forty large scenes,
and some of them pictures ten braccia in every direction, with figures
very large and in every manner. And although some of my young disciples
worked with me there, they sometimes gave me assistance and sometimes
not, for the reason that at times I was obliged, as they know, to
repaint everything with my own hand and go over the whole picture again,
to the end that all might be in one and the same manner. These stories,
I say, treat of the history of Florence, from the building of the city
down to the present day; the division into quarters, the cities brought
to submission, the enemies vanquished, the cities subjugated, and,
finally, the beginning and end of the War