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Now it was the custom in the city of Florence to have almost every year on the principal piazza, on the evening of the festival of S. John the Baptist, towards nightfall, a girandola that is, a contrivance full of fire-trumpets, rockets, and other fireworks; which girandola had the form now of a temple, now of a ship, sometimes of rocks, and at times of a city or of an inferno, according as it pleased the designer; and one year the charge of making one was given to Tribolo, who, as will be described below, made it very beautifully.
The whole structure, then, is of wood, with broad compartments radiating outwards from the foot, to the end that the rockets, when they have been lighted, may not set fire to the other fireworks, but may rise in due order from their separate places, one after another, filling the heavens in proper succession with the fire that blazes in the girandola both above and below.
Constantly in motion, always striving to employ every moment and to see everything, I felt myself at last very much affected by the unceasing sirocco. The Roman air did not agree with me, and I hastened, therefore, as soon as I had seen the illumination of the dome and the girandola, immediately after the Easter festival, through Terracina to Naples. Count Paar travelled with me. We entered St.
Of course there were abundance of serpents, wheels and cannon-shot; there was also a display of dazzling white light, which made a strange appearance on the houses, the river, the bridge, and the faces of the multitude. The whole ended with a second and a more splendid Girandola."
Easter is gone by, the Girandola went off last week, the English are going, and so is our bell, tinkle! tinkle! tinkle! as if its wire had a touch of vernal ague while the old delf plate in the hall is filled and running with cards, every pasteboard parallelogram among them with two P's and a C in the corner; for we are becoming too polite, it seems, to take leave of each other in our own tongue.
The concluding burst the Girandola was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive castle, without smoke or dust.
They are distributed, I say, at wide intervals, to the end that they may not burn all at once, and may produce a beautiful effect; and the same do the mortars, which are bound to the firm parts of the girandola, and make the most beautiful and joyous noises.
Millions of luminous fragments streaked the sky with their blazing fires. All sizes and shapes of light, all colors and shades of colors, were inextricably mingled together. Irradiations in gold, scintillations in crimson, splendors in emerald, lucidities in ultramarine a dazzling girandola of every tint and of every hue.
But with regard to workmanship, it was more beautiful than any other girandola that had ever been made up to that time.
But the most important point is to arrange the girandola in such a manner that the lights that burn in certain vases may last the whole night, and illuminate the piazza; wherefore the whole work is connected together by a simple match of tow steeped in a mixture of powder full of sulphur and aquavitæ, which creeps little by little with its fire to every part which it has to set alight, one after another, until it has kindled the whole.
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