[102] Le Migliore Fabbriche, etc., opus cit.
[103] It remained untouched until 1410 when the right hand aisle was demolished and the left hand one ceded to a Compagnia. In 1561 the priest’s house, the campanile, the cemetery and the loggia were destroyed by Cosimo I., when he built the Uffizi, but the small nave continued to be used as a church until 1743, when it was suppressed and used for the archives of the tribunal.
[104] Illustrazione Istorica del Palazzo della Signoria, etc. Modesto Rastrelli Firenze. 1792. presso Ant. Gius. Pagani e C. p. 52.
[105] or “rostrum,” derived from the word arringare—to harangue.
[106] In old times the Florentines had an almost superstitious admiration for the lion, emblem of the Republic. The Marzocco, as the stone lion of Florence was called, was set above the door, on the four corners, and on the ringhiera of the Palazzo Vecchio, this last was decorated with a golden crown on solemn festivals. The live beasts were kept behind the palace (the Via de’ Leoni still marks the place), and there they remained until Duke Cosimo I. removed them to the Piazza San Marco. Great was the rejoicing in the city when a lioness had cubs; Villani notes the birth of two in 1331 on the day of S. Jacob, in July; and a few years later of six, which he records as a glory for the city and a sign of prosperity for the Commune. Another old chronicler, Paolo Minerbetti, relates how “in 1391 there was much discord and a great battle among the lions, and a lioness who had cubs every year was killed, which was regarded as of evil augury by the citizens.”
[107] See Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florenz. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung von Dr. Carl Frey. Berlin. Wilhelm Hertz. 1885.
[108] The chapel of St. Bernard in the Palazzo Vecchio is painted by Rodolfo Ghirlandajo, who, as Vasari writes, “made in the centre of the ceiling the Holy Trinity, and in the other divisions some angel boys holding the instruments of the Passion, and heads of the twelve Apostles; in the corners he painted the Evangelists, and at the end the angel Gabriel kneeling before the Virgin. In some of the landscapes he figured the Piazza of the Annunziata in Florence, as far as the church of S. Marco.”
[109] By Verrocchio, now in the Bargello.
[110] The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Translated by J. A. Symonds. 2nd edition, p. 220. Vol. 2. John C. Nimmo. 1888.
[111] Signor Iodico Del Badia, in a note to his edition of Luca Landucci’s Diary, writes: “Out of devotion it was the custom for illustrious Florentines and also strangers of rank, such as popes, cardinals, princes, condottieri, etc., to put their own portrait made in wax of the size of life in this church. These were placed on shelves constructed on purpose. But in 1448 these were full, so the waxen images were hung by ropes from the ceiling. If by chance one of them fell down it was looked upon as an evil augury for the person or for his family. When political passions ran high the dominant party removed the portraits of their antagonists.”