ials, caused this one to be carried on. It was the
first edifice that he erected, and he took so great delight therein that
from that time onwards up to his death he was for ever building. Cosimo
pressed this work forward with greater ardour, and while one part was
being begun, he would have another finished. Looking on the work as a
pastime, he was almost always there, and it was his solicitude that
caused Filippo to finish the sacristy, and Donato to make the
stucco-work, with the stone ornaments for those little doors and the
doors of bronze. In the middle of the sacristy, where the priests don
their vestments, he had a tomb made for his father Giovanni, under a
great slab of marble supported by four little columns; and in the same
place he made a tomb for his own family, separating that of the women
from that of the men. In one of the two little rooms that are on either
side of the altar in the said sacristy he made a well in one corner,
with a place for a lavatory. In short, everything in this fabric is
seen to have been built with much judgment. Giovanni and the others had
arranged to make the choir in the middle, below the tribune; but Cosimo
changed this at the wish of Filippo, who made the principal
chapel--which had been designed at first as a smaller recess--so much
greater, that he was able to make the choir therein, as it is at
present. This being finished, there remained to be made the central
tribune and the rest of the church; but this tribune, with the rest, was
not vaulted until after the death of Filippo. This church is one hundred
and forty-four braccia in length, and many errors are seen therein, one
being that the columns are placed on the level of the ground instead of
being raised on a dado, which should have been as high as the level of
the bases of the pilasters which stand on the steps, so that, as one
sees the pilasters shorter than the columns, the whole of that work
appears badly proportioned. All this was caused by the counsels of his
successors, who were jealous of his name and had made models in
opposition to his during his lifetime. For these they had been put to
shame with sonnets written by Filippo, and after his death they took
vengeance on him in this manner, not only in this work but in all those
that remained to be carried out by them. He left the model for the
presbytery of the priests of S. Lorenzo, and part of the building
finished, wherein he made the cloister one hundred and fo