thing that may be useful, pleasing, or helpful to anyone
who may read these my labours, I shall add this as well. While Taddeo
was working, as has been related, at the Vigna of Pope Julius and at the
facade of Mattiuolo, the Master of the Post, he executed for Monsignor
Innocenzio, the most reverend and illustrious Cardinal di Monte, two
painted pictures of no great size; and one of them, which is beautiful
enough, is now in the guardaroba of that Cardinal (who has given the
other away), in company with a vast number of things ancient and modern,
all truly of the rarest, among which, I must not omit to mention, there
is a painted picture as fantastic as any work of which we have spoken
hitherto. In this picture, which is about two braccia and a half in
height, there is nothing to be seen by him who looks at it from the
ordinary point of view, from the front, save some letters on a
flesh-coloured ground, and in the centre the Moon, which goes gradually
increasing or diminishing according to the lines of the writing. And
yet, if you go below the picture and look in a sphere or mirror that is
placed over the picture in the manner of a little baldachin, you see in
that mirror, which receives the image from the picture, a most lifelike
portrait in painting of King Henry II of France, somewhat larger than
life, with these words about it--HENRY II, ROY DE FRANCE. You can see
the same portrait by lowering the picture, placing your brow on the
upper part of the frame, and looking down; but it is true that whoever
looks at it in that manner, sees it turned the other way from what it is
in the mirror. That portrait, I say, cannot be seen save by looking at
it as described above, because it is painted on twenty-eight ridges, too
low to be perceived, which are between the lines of the words given
below, in which, besides the ordinary meaning, there may be read, by
looking at both ends of the lines and in the centre, certain letters
somewhat larger than the others, which run thus--

HENRICUS VALESIUS DEI GRATIA GALLORUM REX INVICTISSIMUS.

It is true, indeed, that the Roman M. Alessandro Taddei, the secretary
of that Cardinal, and Don Silvano Razzi, my dearest friend, who have
given me information about this picture and about many other things, do
not know by whose hand it is, but only that it was presented by the
above-named King Henry to Cardinal Caraffa, when he was in France, and
then by Caraffa to the most illustrious Cardi