caps and the arch a shallow frieze is interposed,
on which are carved little figures engaged in combats, a love scene,
and Cupids with an organ and trumpets. The corbels from which the vaults
spring are carved, the subjects being two groups of boys playing, a man
fighting a dragon or basilisk with club and little target, a struggle
between a girl and a bear, &c. The doors at the end, the Porta della
Carita, where distribution of corn used to be made to the poor at a low
price, and that opening on a stair to the hall of the Lesser Council
appear to belong to the earlier building. The ring with the lion's head
on the door is a fine piece of fourteenth-century bronze-work. The
knocker is not so good. A knight with raised arm stands on a lion's head
against a post covered with scales; above and below foliage spreads out.
The caps of the loggia are very fine, though not of equal value. The
three central ones are Renaissance work, and marry admirably with their
heavy, ornamented abaci, which in the others appear over-heavy, and
plainly an addition. In the earlier work the technique of the carving is
better, and the foliage has more spring. The most interesting one is the
AEsculapius subject, which De Diversis saw in the carver's hands in 1435,
planned, as he says, by Nicolo de Lazina, a Cremonese noble, who was
chancellor at the time. It is interesting both from the point of view of
the carving and costume, and as showing the apparatus of an alchemist's
laboratory. Close by it on the wall is the "metrical epitaph," which De
Diversis says the chancellor composed. The columns, which are of Curzola
marble, belong to the earlier building, though the entasis shows that
classical feeling was beginning to affect even architects who worked in
Gothic. Mr. T.G. Jackson's explanation of the addition of the heavy
abaci seems quite reasonable--viz. that the earlier arcade was pointed,
and that, since a good deal of the building survived the fire, it
was necessary to raise the springing of the arches, when they were
made round to match the levels of the ends which were not destroyed. The
carved string-course above and the Gothic windows of the _piano nobile_
are also remains of the earlier building. There was a castle on the site
of the palace from the days of the establishment of the Slav colony on
Monte Sergio, which, together with the marshy inlet which then occupied
the site of the Stradone, afforded sufficient protection to make sudden