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The fish-ponds in front are divided in the middle by a bridge twelve braccia wide, which leads to an avenue of the same width, bounded at the sides and covered above by an unbroken vault of mulberry-trees, ten braccia in height, thus making a covered avenue three hundred braccia in length, delightful for its shade, which opens on to the high road to Prato by a gate placed between two fountains that serve to give water to travellers and animals.
When Donatello was very sick, certain of his kinsfolk, who were well to do in the world, but had not visited him in many years, went to condole with him in his last illness. Before they left, they told him it was his duty to leave to them a small farm which he had in the territories of Prato, and this they begged very earnestly, though it was small and produced a very small income.
Could these things have happened in any other city save Prato, or to any other than a child in the days not so long before Savonarola was burned?
Now in the year 1524, after M. Baldo Magini had caused Antonio, the brother of Giuliano da San Gallo, to build in the Madonna delle Carceri, in the town of Prato, a tabernacle of marble with two columns, architrave, cornice, and a quarter-round arch, Antonio resolved to bring it about that M. Baldo should give the commission for the picture which was to adorn that tabernacle to Niccolò, with whom he had formed a friendship when he was working in the Palace of the above-mentioned Cardinal dal Monte at Monte Sansovino.
In addition to the pictures mentioned above, I may call attention to the adoring figure of S. Catherine of Siena, in three large paintings now severally in the Pitti, at Lucca, and in the Louvre. In the Uffizzi. As a composition, it is the Frate's masterpiece. See Vol. I., Age of the Despots, p. 487, for this consequence of the sack of Prato. L'Art Chrétien, vol. ii. p. 515.
So on till they landed in Prato station: and there they sat. A fellow passenger told them, there was an hour to wait here: an hour. Something had happened up the line. "Then I propose we make tea," said Angus, beaming. "Why not! Of course. Let us make tea. And I will look for water." So Aaron and Francis went to the restaurant bar and filled the little pan at the tap.
"It is a long while since you had your breakfast, Tessa," said Tito, seeing some stalls near, with fruit and sweetmeats upon them. "Are you hungry?" "Yes, I think I am if you will have some too." Tito bought some apricots, and cakes, and comfits, and put them into her apron. "Come," he said, "let us walk on to the Prato, and then perhaps you will not be afraid to go the rest of the way alone."
We see him first, this gallant Francesco, as a youth returning home in triumph from a victory over the Scaligeri of Verona, welcomed by his old father, the lord of Padua, there on the Prato, amidst the rejoicings of the people. Then we see how, when Padua had fallen into the hands of the Visconti, the old Francesco was kept a prisoner at Monza.
The villa itself is very stately, a three-storied house in the Venetian style, from whose upper windows you can command a fine stretch of country; below you on either hand the Piazza del Santo, the Prato della Valle, with their enormous churches, pink and grey; beyond these the city walls, the green plain; lastly, the ragged outline of the far distant hills.
He defends himself thus in a letter to Lodovico Buonarroti: "Del caso dei Medici io non ò mai parlato contra di loro cosa nessuna, se non in quel modo che s' è parlato generalmente per ogn' uomo, come fu del caso di Prato; che se le pietre avessin saputo parlare, n' avrebbono parlato."
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