tion to the guardaroba, on the second floor of
the apartments in the Ducal Palace; and this he has furnished all around
with presses seven braccia high, with rich carvings of walnut-wood, in
order to deposit in them the most important, precious, and beautiful
things that he possesses. Over the doors of those presses, within their
ornaments, Fra Ignazio has distributed fifty-seven pictures about two
braccia high and wide in proportion, in which are painted in oils on the
wood with the greatest diligence, after the manner of miniatures, the
Tables of Ptolemy, all measured with perfect accuracy and corrected
after the most recent authorities, with exact charts of navigation and
their scales for measuring and degrees, done with supreme diligence; and
with these are all the names, both ancient and modern. His distribution
of these pictures is on this wise. At the principal entrance of the
hall, on the transverse surfaces of the thickness of the presses, in
four pictures, are four half-spheres in perspective; in the two below is
the Universe of the Earth, and in the two above is the Universe of the
Heavens, with its signs and celestial figures. Then as one enters, on
the right hand, there is all Europe in fourteen tables and pictures, one
after another, as far as the centre of the wall that is at the head,
opposite to the principal door; in which centre is placed the clock with
the wheels and with the spheres of the planets that every day go through
their motions, which is that clock, so famous and renowned, made by the
Florentine Lorenzo della Volpaia. Above these tables is Africa in eleven
tables, as far as the said clock; and then, beyond that clock, Asia in
the lower range, which continues likewise in fourteen tables as far as
the principal door. Above these tables of Asia, in fourteen other
tables, there follow the West Indies, beginning like the others from the
clock, and continuing as far as the same principal door; and thus there
are in all fifty-seven tables. In the base at the foot, in an equal
number of pictures running right round, which will be exactly in line
with those tables, are to be all the plants and all the animals copied
from nature, according to the kinds that those countries produce. Over
the cornice of the presses, which is the crown of the whole, there are
to be some projections separating the pictures, and upon these are to be
placed such of the antique heads in marble as are in existence of the
Emper