hole Piazza. But of this Hall, and of the other
improvements that have been or are being made in the Palace, there
will be a longer account in another place. This only let me say at
present, that if Cronaca and those other ingenious craftsmen who
gave the design for the Hall could return to life, in my belief they
would not recognize either the Palace, or the Hall, or any other
thing that is there. The Hall, namely, that part which is
rectangular, without counting the works of Bandinelli and Ammanati,
is ninety braccia in length and thirty-eight braccia in breadth.

But returning to Cronaca: in the last years of his life there
entered into his head such a frenzy for the cause of Fra Girolamo
Savonarola, that he would talk of nothing else but that. Living
thus, in the end he died after a passing long illness, at the age of
fifty-five, and was buried honourably in the Church of S. Ambrogio
at Florence, in the year 1509; and after no long space of time the
following epitaph was written for him by Messer Giovan Battista
Strozzi:

CRONACA
VIVO, E MILLE E MILLE ANNI E MILLE ANCORA,
MERCE DE' VIVI MIEI PALAZZI E TEMPI,
BELLA ROMA, VIVRA L' ALMA MIA FLORA.

Cronaca had a brother called Matteo, who gave himself to sculpture
and worked under the sculptor Antonio Rossellino; but although he
was a man of good and beautiful intelligence, a fine draughtsman,
and well practised in working marble, he left no finished work,
because, being snatched from the world by death at the age of
nineteen, he was not able to accomplish that which was expected from
him by all who knew him.

FOOTNOTE:

[28] Earnest-money.

[29] Room in which the beans used in voting for the
election of magistrates were counted.

[30] Office of those who had charge of the Specchio, the
book in which were inscribed the names of such citizens as were in
arrears with their taxes.

DOMENICO PULIGO

LIFE OF DOMENICO PULIGO

PAINTER OF FLORENCE

It is a marvellous and almost incredible thing, that many followers
of the art of painting, through continual practice and handling of
colours, either by an instinct of nature or by the trick of a good
manner, acquired without any draughtsmanship or grounding, carry
their works to such thorough completion, and very often contrive to
make them so good, that, although the craftsmen themselves may be
none of the rarest, their pictures force the world to extol them and
to hold them in supreme ven