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<b>SIRANI, ELISABETTA.</b> Has been praised as a woman and as an artist by Lanzi, Malvasia, Picinardi, and other writers until one must believe that in spite of the exaggeration of her personal qualities and her artistic genius, she was a singularly admirable woman and a gifted artist.
Nicola Pisano, about the year 1231, taking for his model an ancient sarcophagus at Pisa, which contained the remains of Beatrice, mother of the Countess Matilda, sculptured an urn a feat in those days so extraordinary, as to have conferred upon him the title of Nicolas of the Urn. This artist, in the words of Lanzi, "was the first to see and follow light."
At that time the top storey of the building, as it now exists, was an open terrace affording a pleasant promenade from the Palazzo Vecchio down to the river and back to the Loggia de' Lanzi. Then, as his family increased, Cosimo decided to move, and the incomplete and abandoned Pitti Palace was bought and finished.
This church seems to have been confused by many with the little Santo Stefano, still, I think, a parish church, though now incorporated with the abbey buildings, of the Badia. You pass out of Via Lambertesca by Via de' Lanzi, coming thus into Piazza Signoria; then, passing Palazzo Uguccione, you take Via Condotta to the right, and thus come into Via del Proconsolo at the Abbey gate.
And I shall look once more on the Loggia de' Lanzi, and see Cellini's young contadino masquerading as Perseus, and in my heart I shall remember the little wax figure he made for a model, now in Bargello, which is so much more beautiful than this young giant.
Among the distinguished antiquaries who acted as curators and cicerones were Sebastiano Bianchi, Antonio Cocchi, Raymond Cocchi, Joseph Bianchi, J. B. Pelli, the Abbe Lanzi, and Zacchiroli. The last three all wrote elaborate descriptions of the Gallery during the last decades of the eighteenth century.
Pliny speaks expressly of its having been practised by Parrhasius and Pausias. Many writers erroneously attribute the invention to Correggio; but Lanzi says, "it was discovered and enlarged by Melozzo da Forli, improved by Andrea Mantegna and his school, and perfected by Correggio and others."
By their orders scaffolding was erected at the appointed place, five feet in height, ten in width, and eighty feet long. This scaffolding was covered with faggots and heath, supported by cross-bars of the very driest wood that could be found. Two narrow paths were made, two feet wide at most, their entrance giving an the Loggia dei Lanzi, their exit exactly opposite.
I went no farther, but stepped across a little space of the square to the Loggia di Lanzi, which is broad and noble, of three vast arches, at the end of which, I take it, is a part of the Palazzo Uffizi fronting on the piazza.
See the bas-relief upon the pedestal of his "Perseus" in the Loggia de' Lanzi. In the National Gallery. His family name was Domenico di Currado di Doffo Bigordi. He probably worked during his youth and early manhood as a goldsmith and got his artist's name from the trade of making golden chaplets for the Florentine women. See Vasari, vol. v. p. 66.
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