ce, has not been able to fill them up by bringing down earth, as it
has done at Chioggia, where it has filled and banked up the lagoons in
such a manner that, where there was formerly water, many tracts of land
and villas have sprung up, to the great benefit of the city of Venice.
Wherefore it is the opinion of many persons, and in particular of the
Magnificent Messer Luigi Cornaro, a Venetian gentleman of ripe wisdom
gained both by learning and by long experience, that, if it had not been
for the warning of Fra Giocondo, all the silting up that took place in
the lagoons of Chioggia would have happened, and perhaps on a greater
scale, in those of Venice, inflicting incredible damage and almost ruin
on that city. The same Messer Luigi, who was very much the friend of Fra
Giocondo, as he is and always has been of all men of talent, declares
that his native city of Venice owes an eternal debt of gratitude for
this to the memory of Fra Giocondo, who on this account, he says, might
reasonably be called the second founder of Venice; and that he almost
deserves more praise for having preserved by that expedient the grandeur
and nobility of that marvellous and puissant city, than do those who
built it at the beginning in such a weak and ill-considered fashion,
seeing that the benefit received from him will be to all eternity, as it
has been hitherto, of incalculable utility and advantage to Venice.

Not many years after Fra Giocondo had executed this divine work, the
Venetians suffered a great loss in the burning of the Rialto, the place
in which are the magazines of their most precious merchandise--the
treasure, as it were, of that city. This happened at the very time when
that Republic had been reduced by long-continued wars and by the loss
of the greater part, or rather almost the whole, of her dominions on the
mainland to a desperate condition; and the Signori then governing were
full of doubt and hesitation as to what they should do. However, the
rebuilding of that place being a matter of the greatest importance, they
resolved that it should be reconstructed at all costs. And wishing to
give it all possible grandeur, in keeping with the greatness and
magnificence of that Republic, and having already recognized the talent
of Fra Giocondo and his great ability in architecture, they gave him the
commission to make a design for that structure; whereupon he drew one in
the following manner. He proposed to occupy all the space tha