[59]. For ‘Cipollino’ see footnote 70 on p. 49, postea.
[60]. The ‘Mischiati’ are the variegated stones we know as ‘Breccias,’ already noticed in § 5. Vasari explains the names ‘Saligni’ and ‘Campanini’ in § 10. The terms are not now in use.
[61]. The ‘David’ stood formerly on the left hand side as one entered the gateway of the Ducal Palace, or Palazzo Vecchio. It is 15 feet high. In 1873 it was removed, and is now in the Academy, but Bandinello’s group still holds its original position to the right of the entrance, on the side towards the Uffizi.
[62]. The existing figure of Neptune is the work of Ammanati, to whom Florence owes the stately Ponte S. Trinità. The subsidiary figures of sea-deities on the fountain are by other hands.
[63]. See Note, postea, p. 119 f.
[64]. On the subject of the Seravezza quarries and their exploitation by Michelangelo see Note, as above. With regard to the Façade of S. Lorenzo much might be said, as the project for its completion has now again come forward into prominence. See articles by Sig. B. Supino in L’Arte, Anno IV, fasc. 7, and M. Marcel Reymond in the Revue Archéologique for 1906. It is well known that Brunelleschi, who reconstructed the basilica in the fifteenth century, left the façade incomplete and with no indication of his design for it. As it was the church of the Medici, the popes of this family, Leo X and Clement VII, furthered by means of a competition a grand project for its completion; and in this work Michelangelo was for many years involved. Drawings of his for the proposed façade are to be seen in the Casa Buonarroti, and he prepared marbles, as noticed in the Note, postea, p. 119 f., but the preparations proved abortive.
What Vasari says about Michelangelo’s façade that it ‘è oggi abbozzata fuor della porta di detta chiesa,’ and that there is one column on the spot, is interesting but not very easy to understand. Milanesi, in a note on this passage in his edition of Vasari, I, 119, going one better than the Lemonnier editors, gives a circumstantial account to the effect that ‘The preliminary work (abbozzata) which was outside the church in the days of Vasari, was buried in the first years of the seventeenth century, along with other architectural fragments, in a trench excavated on the piazza along the left side of the church.’ Unfortunately among the authorities at S. Lorenzo this statement is smiled at as a mere popular legend, but it is hoped that in connection with the long-delayed completion, which is now again on the tapis, the truth on this matter will come to light.
[65]. Milanesi remarks, ad loc., that for ‘Pietrasanta’ Vasari should have written ‘Carrara,’ as the quarries at the latter place were actually exploited by the ancients, whereas the Pietrasanta workings were only opened up in the time of Michelangelo. See postea, p. 122. The Pietrasanta people however do claim that the Romans were at work among their hills.
[66]. There are abundant instances both from Greek and from Roman times of statues, heads, architectural members, columns, and the like, blocked out in the quarries, and still lying unfinished as they were left many hundreds of years ago.
[67]. Vasari gives a notice of Giovanni da Nola, whose surname was Merliano, in the Lives of Alfonso Lombardi and other sculptors. See Opere, ed. Milanesi, V, 94 f. He there describes the tomb mentioned above, which was to have been transported to Spain, but owing to the death of the viceroy, Don Pietro, Marquis of Villafranca, it has remained in S. Giacomo at Naples.