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The great fountain with its bronze figures at this corner is by Bartolommeo Ammanati, a pupil of Bandinelli, and the statue of Cosimo I is by Gian Bologna, who was the best of the post-Michelangelo sculptors and did much good work in Florence, as we shall see at the Bargello and in the Boboli Gardens. He studied under Michelangelo in Rome.
After his designs and directions, likewise, there was executed in S. Chiara at Urbino by the Florentine sculptor Bartolommeo Ammanati, who was then very young, the tomb of Duke Francesco Maria, which, for a simple work of little cost, proved to be very beautiful.
For we see that he was not even alone, as an ecclesiastic, in the adventure; that he had for associate on that amorous frolic one Giacopo Ammanati, Cardinal-Presbyter of San Crisogno, Roderigo's senior and an ordained priest, which without seeking to make undue capital out of the circumstance we may mention that Roderigo was not. He was a Cardinal-Deacon, be it remembered.
During these same years Michelangelo carried on a correspondence with Ammanati and Vasari about the completion of the Laurentian Library. His letters illustrate what I have more than once observed regarding his unpractical method of commencing great works, without more than the roughest sketches, intelligible to himself alone, and useless to an ordinary craftsman.
Among the architects, Palladio was a native of Vicenza; Giacomo Barozzi, the author of the "Treatise on the Orders," took the name by which he is known from his birthplace, Vignola; Vincenzo Scamozzi was a fellow-townsman of Palladio; Galeazzo Alessi, though born at Perugia, spent his life and developed his talents in Genoa; Andrea Formigine, the palace-builder, was a Bolognese; Bartolommeo Ammanati alone at Florence exercised the arts of sculpture and architecture in their old conjunction.
And because the model of Filippo has not been found, his Excellency has caused Bartolommeo Ammanati, an excellent sculptor and architect, to make another, according to which the work is being carried on; and a great part of the courtyard is already completed in rustic work, similar to the exterior.
The establishment was founded immediately after the institution of the order, and mainly by the care and energy of Saint Francisco Borgia, the third general of the order. The present building, however, was raised in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. by the Florentine architect Ammanati, the first stone having been laid in 1582.
On the other side, opposite to this, there is to be, in a similar façade that is being made by the sculptor and architect Ammanati, a fountain to throw up water in the Hall, with a rich and most beautiful adornment of columns and statues of marble and bronze.
The models finished, the Duke went to see those of Ammanati and of Benvenuto; and, being more pleased with that of Ammanati than with that of Benvenuto, he resolved that Ammanati should have the marble and make the giant, because he was younger than Benvenuto and more practised in marble.
Vasari was then living and working for the Duke at Florence; but he had designed a chapel for S. Pietro a Montorio in Rome, where Julius III. wished to erect tombs to the memory of his ancestors; and the work had been allotted to Bartolommeo Ammanati under Michelangelo's direction.
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