ed by many carvers, laboured continually for ten years, with vast
expense to that Congregation; and he brought the work to completion in
their house of Guarlondo, a place near San Salvi, without the Porta alla
Croce, where the General of the Order that was having the work executed
almost always lived. Benedetto, then, carried out the making of that
chapel and tomb in such a manner as amazed Florence; but, as Fate would
have it--for even marbles and the finest works of men of excellence are
subject to the whims of fortune--after much discord among those monks,
their government was changed, and the work remained unfinished in the
same place until the year 1530. At which time, war raging round
Florence, all those labours were ruined by soldiers, the heads wrought
with such diligence were impiously struck off from the little figures,
and the whole work was so completely destroyed and broken to pieces,
that the monks afterwards sold what was left for a mere song. If any one
wishes to see a part of it, let him go to the Office of Works of S.
Maria del Fiore, where there are a few pieces, bought as broken marble
not many years ago by the officials of that place. And, in truth, even
as everything is brought to fine completion in those monasteries and
other places where peace and concord reign, so, on the contrary, nothing
ever reaches perfection or an end worthy of praise in places where there
is naught save rivalry and discord, because what takes a good and wise
man a hundred years to build up can be destroyed by an ignorant and
crazy boor in one day. And it seems as if fortune wishes that those who
know the least and delight in nothing that is excellent, should always
be the men who govern and command, or rather, ruin, everything: as was
also said of secular Princes, with no less learning than truth, by
Ariosto, at the beginning of his seventeenth canto. But returning to
Benedetto: it was a sad pity that all his labours and all the money
spent by that Order should have come to such a miserable end.

By the same architect were designed the door and vestibule of the Badia
of Florence, and likewise some chapels, among them that of S. Stefano,
erected by the family of the Pandolfini. Finally, Benedetto was summoned
to England into the service of the King, for whom he executed many works
in marble and in bronze, and, in particular, his tomb; from which works,
through the liberality of that King, he gained enough to be able to live