[46] Given in Addington Symonds' Life of Michelangelo.
[47] "Before thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven; before thee and thy advent; for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet-smelling flowers; for thee the levels of the sea do laugh and heaven propitiated shines with outspread light" (Munro's Lucretius).
[48] See Andrea del Sarto, by H. Guinness in the Great Masters series, and G. F. Rustici in Vasari.
[49] Opposite the bridge, at the beginning of the Via dei Benci, is the palace of the old Alberti family; the remains of their loggia stand further up the street, at the corner of the Borgo Santa Croce. In all these streets, between the Lungarno della Borsa and the Borgo dei Greci, there are many old houses and palaces; in the Piazza dei Peruzzi the houses, formerly of that family and partly built in the fourteenth century, follow the lines of the Roman amphitheatre–the Parlascio of the early Middle Ages. The Palazzo dei Giudici–in the piazza of that name–was originally built in the thirteenth century, though reconstructed at a later epoch.
[50] See Addington Symonds' Michelangelo. The horse in question was the equestrian monument of Francesco Sforza.
[51] "The one was all seraphic in his ardour, the other by his
wisdom was on earth a splendour of cherubic light.
"Of one will I discourse, because of both the two he
speaketh who doth either praise, which so he will;
for to one end their works."
–Wicksteed's translation, Paradiso xi.
[52] "I desired, and understanding was given me. I prayed, and the spirit of Wisdom came upon me; and I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones."
[53] The identification of each science and its representative is rather doubtful, especially in the celestial series. From altar to centre, Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic are represented by Aelius Donatus, Cicero and Aristotle (or Zeno); Music, Astronomy, Geometry, Arithmetic by Tubal Cain, Zoroaster (or Ptolemy), Euclid and Pythagoras. From window to centre, Civil Law is represented by Justinian, Canon Law by Innocent III., Philosophy apparently by Boethius; the next four seem to be Contemplative, Moral, Mystical and Dogmatic Theology, and their representatives Jerome, John of Damascus, Basil and Augustine–but, with the exception of St. Augustine, the identification is quite arbitrary. Possibly if the Logician is Zeno, the Philosopher is not Boethius but Aristotle; the figure above, representing Philosophy, holds a mirror which seems to symbolise the divine creation of the cosmic Universe.
[54] In Richter's Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo rather too sweepingly ignores the fact that there were a few excellent masters between the two.
[55] The ledger and the stave (il quaderno e la doga): "In 1299 Messer Niccola Acciaiuoli and Messer Baldo d' Aguglione abstracted from the public records a leaf containing the evidence of a disreputable transaction, in which they, together with the Podestà, had been engaged. At about the same time Messer Durante de' Chiaramontesi, being officer of the customs for salt, took away a stave (doga) from the standard measure, thus making it smaller."–A. J. Butler.