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The name has not been met with again between the Estense document and Scipione Maffei's well-known description, written in 1711, of Cristofori's "gravecembalo col piano e forte." My view of Cristofori's invention allows me to think that the Estense "piano e forte" may have been a hammer cembalo, a very imperfect one, of course.
I have given the first place in description to Cristofori's actions, instead of to the "cembalo" or instrument to which they were applied, because piano and forte, from touch, became possible through them, and what else was accomplished by Cristofori was due, primarily, to the dynamic idea.
I should rather accept his good and complete instrument as the sum of his own lifelong studies and experiments, added to those of generations before him, which have left no record for us as yet discovered. It is dated A.D. 1598, and the reference is evidently to an instrument of the spinet or cembalo kind; but how the tone was produced there is no statement, no word to base an inference upon.
The principal are, the Colonna palace, on the Quirinal hill; and the Barberini palace, where we find a portrait of Raphael's mistress, Fornarina, painted by himself, and an original picture of Beatrice Cenci by Guidosteri. The finest of all the Roman palaces is that of Borghese; from its form, which resembles a piano, this building has obtained the name of "il Cembalo di Borghese."