city--would have been the most
superb work that had ever been made, so far as is known, from the
Creation of the world to our own day. What great glory it would have
been for the Holy Roman Church to see the Supreme Pontiff, her Chief,
gather together, as into the most famous and most holy of monasteries,
all those ministers of God who dwell in the city of Rome, to live there,
as it were in a new earthly Paradise, a celestial, angelic, and most
holy life, giving an example to all Christendom, and awakening the minds
of the infidels to the true worship of God and of the Blessed Jesus
Christ! But this great work remained unfinished--nay, scarcely begun--by
reason of the death of that Pontiff; and the little that was carried out
is known by his arms, or the device that he used as his arms, namely,
two keys crossed on a field of red. The fifth of the five works that the
same Pope intended to execute was the Church of S. Pietro, which he had
proposed to make so vast, so rich, and so ornate, that it is better to
be silent than to attempt to speak of it, because I could not describe
even the least part of it, and the rather as the model was afterwards
destroyed, and others have been made by other architects. If any man
wishes to gain a full knowledge of the grand conception of Pope Nicholas
V in this matter, let him read what Giannozzo Manetti, a noble and
learned citizen of Florence, has written with the most minute detail in
the Life of the said Pontiff, who availed himself in all the aforesaid
designs, as has been said, as well as in his others, of the intelligence
and great industry of Bernardo Rossellino.

Antonio, brother of Bernardo (to return at length to the point whence,
with so fair an occasion, I digressed), wrought his sculptures about the
year 1490; and since the more men's works display diligence and
difficulties the more they are admired, and these two characteristics
are particularly noticeable in Antonio's works, he deserves fame and
honour as a most illustrious example from which modern sculptors have
been able to learn how those statues should be made that are to secure
the greatest praise and fame by reason of their difficulties. For after
Donatello he did most towards adding a certain finish and refinement to
the art of sculpture, seeking to give such depth and roundness to his
figures that they appear wholly round and finished, a quality which had
not been seen to such perfection in sculpture up to that