nd large as life, which of its kind is the rarest
and most beautiful piece of sculpture that there is to be seen.
Wherefore the Lord Duke keeps it, as a thing most dear to him, in the
Pitti Palace, intending to place it in the chapel, or rather, little
church, that he is building in that place; which little church could not
have in these times anything more worthy of itself and of so great a
Prince. In short, it is not possible to praise this work so much as
would be sufficient. Now, although I could enlarge at much greater
length on the works of Benvenuto, who has been in his every action
spirited, proud, vigorous, most resolute, and truly terrible, and a
person who has been only too well able to speak for himself with
Princes, no less than to employ his hand and brain in matters of art, I
shall say nothing more of him here, seeing that he has written of his
own life and works, and a treatise on the goldsmith's arts, and on
founding and casting in metal, with other things pertaining to such
arts, and also of sculpture, with much more eloquence and order than I
perchance would be able to use here; as for him, therefore, I must be
content with this short summary of the rarest of his principal works.

[Illustration: PERSEUS

(_After the bronze by =Benvenuto Cellini=. Florence: Loggia de' Lanzi_)

_Brogi_]

Francesco di Giuliano da San Gallo, sculptor, architect, and
Academician, and now a man seventy years of age, has executed many works
of sculpture, as has been related in the Life of his father and
elsewhere; the three figures of marble, somewhat larger than life, which
are over the altar of the Church of Orsanmichele, S. Anne, the Virgin,
and the Child Christ, figures which are much extolled; certain other
statues, also in marble, for the tomb of Piero de' Medici at Monte
Cassino; the tomb of Bishop de' Marzi, which is in the Nunziata, and
that of Monsignor Giovio, the writer of the history of his own times.
In architecture, likewise, the same Francesco has executed many good and
beautiful works in Florence and elsewhere; and he has well deserved,
both for his own good qualities and for the services of his father
Giuliano, to be always favoured by the house of Medici as their protege,
on which account Duke Cosimo, after the death of Baccio d'Agnolo, gave
him the place which that master had held as architect to the Duomo of
Florence.

Of Ammanati, who is also among the first of our Academicians, enough
having been