ale in Friuli, which was afterwards given by
Giovanni to a brother of his own. Then, having to make for the same
Cardinal, likewise at that villa, a fountain with the water spouting
through the trunk of an elephant's head in marble, he imitated in the
whole work and in every detail the Temple of Neptune, which had been
discovered a short time before among the ancient ruins of the Palazzo
Maggiore, all adorned with lifelike products of the sea, and wrought
excellently well with various ornaments in stucco; and he even surpassed
by a great measure the artistry of that ancient hall by giving great
beauty to those animals, shells, and other suchlike things without
number, and arranging them very well. After this he made another
fountain, but in a rustic manner, in the hollow of a torrent-bed
surrounded by a wood; causing water to flow in drops and fine jets from
sponge-stones and stalactites, with beautiful artifice, so that it had
all the appearance of a work of nature. On the highest point of those
hollow rocks and sponge-stones he fashioned a large lion's head, which
had around it a garland formed of maidenhair and other plants, trained
there with great artistry; and no one could believe what grace these
gave to that wild place, which was most beautiful in every part and
beyond all conception pleasing.

That work finished, after the Cardinal had made Giovanni a Chevalier of
S. Pietro, he sent him to Florence, to the end that, when a certain
chamber had been made in the Palace of the Medici (at that corner,
namely, where the elder Cosimo, the builder of that edifice, had made a
loggia for the convenience and assemblage of the citizens, as it was the
custom at that time for the most noble families to do), he might paint
and adorn it all with grotesques and stucco. That loggia having then
been enclosed after the design of Michelagnolo Buonarroti, and given the
form of a chamber, with two knee-shaped windows, which were the first to
be made in that manner, with iron gratings, for the exterior of a
palace, Giovanni adorned all the vaulting with stucco-work and painting,
making in a medallion the six balls, the arms of the House of Medici,
supported by three little boys executed in relief in attitudes of great
beauty and grace. Besides this, he made there many most beautiful
animals, and also many most lovely devices of gentlemen and lords of
that illustrious house, together with some scenes in half-relief,
executed in stucco;