d the tombs of the men from those of the
women. But again this work too seems, in spite of Vasari, to belong
rather uncertainly to Donatello. It is very rare to find a detached tomb
in Italy, and rarer still to find it under a table, where it is very
difficult to see it properly, and the care and beauty that have been
spent upon it might seem to be wasted. It is perhaps rather Buggiano's
hand than Donato's we see even in so beautiful a thing as this, which
Donatello may well have designed. The beautiful bust of S. Lorenzo over
the doorway is, however, the authentic work of Donato himself. Full of
eagerness, S. Lorenzo looks up as though to answer some request, and to
grant it.

The splendid porphyry sarcophagus set in bronze before a bronze screen
of great beauty, by Verocchio, is certainly one of the finest things
here. Every leaf and curl of the foliage seem instinct with some
splendid life, seem to tremble almost with the fierceness of their
vitality. There lie Giovanni and Piero de' Medici, the uncle and father
of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Close by you may see a relief of Cosimo
Vecchio, their father.

The cloisters, where Lorenzo walked often enough, are beautiful, and
then from them one passes so easily into the Laurentian Library, founded
by Cosimo Vecchio, and treasured and added to by Piero and Lorenzo il
Magnifico, but scattered and partly destroyed by the vandalism and
futile stupidity of Savonarola and his puritans in 1494. Savonarola,
however, was a cleverer demagogue than our Oliver (it is well to
remember that he was a Dominican), for he persuaded the Signoria to let
him have such of the MSS. as he could find for the library of S. Marco.
The honour of such a person is perhaps not worth discussing, but we may
remind ourselves what Cosimo had done for S. Marco, and how he had built
the library there. In 1508 the friars turned these stolen goods into
money, selling them back to Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who was soon
to be Leo X, who carried them to Rome. Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, later
Clement VII, presented Leo's collection to the Laurentian Library, which
he had bidden Michelangelo to rebuild. This was interrupted by the
unfortunate business of 1527, and it was not till Cosimo I came that the
library was finished. Perhaps the most precious thing here is the
Pandects of Justinian, taken by the Pisans from Amalfi in 1135, and
seized by the Florentines when they took Pisa in 1406. Amalfi prized
these abov