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Updated: May 2, 2025
The most superb of the external bronzes is the "Mercury" on the left of the façade. To the patience and genius of Signor Giacomo Boni is the restored statuary of the Loggetta due; Cav. Munaretti was responsible for the bronzes, and Signor Moretti for the building. All honour to them! Old Coryat's enthusiasm for the Loggetta is very hearty.
I had discovered in the morning, from the steeple of Santa Maria, a queer ruined church, and was oddly impressed by the bare façade, with the yawning apertures of empty windows. I went to it, but every entrance was bricked up save one, which had a door of rough boards fastened by a padlock; and in a neighbouring house I found an old man with a key.
After I had seen our baggage properly disposed of, curiosity led me, though night was approaching, to walk out and take a view of the famous facade of the Louvre. From thence I strayed, through the gardens of the Thuilleries, to the Place de Louis XV; being delighted with the beauties around me, but which I have not now time to describe.
A Ricordo dated March 10 gives a brief account of the last four years, winding up with the notice that "Pope Leo, perhaps because he wants to get the façade at S. Lorenzo finished quicker than according to the contract made with me, and I also consenting thereto, sets me free ... and so he leaves me at liberty, under no obligation of accounting to any one for anything which I have had to do with him or others upon his account."
Such figures are usually ranged on either side of the chief entrance; they are motionless as statues, save when in the immediate act of soliciting alms; indeed I have sometimes noticed how beggars standing before a church façade are suggestive of statuary, the want of which is so much felt in the unsculpturesque architecture of Russia.
And, indeed, at nine o'clock, when Pierre crossed the piazza on his way to the Canons' Entrance in the Via Santa Marta, where the holders of pink tickets were admitted, he saw the portico of the facade still thronged with people who were but slowly gaining admittance, while several gentlemen in evening dress, members of some Catholic association, bestirred themselves to maintain order with the help of a detachment of Pontifical Guards.
He remembered the night years earlier when, as a protest against some restrictive action of a County Council, the theatre of varieties whose Promenade rivalled throughout the whole world even the Promenade of the Folies-Bergère, shut its doors and darkened its blazing facade, and the entire West End seemed to go into a kind of shocked mourning.
None of us, I believe, expected to see so imposing a structure on that side of the Atlantic. I am ill at describing buildings, but the beauty and majesty of the American capitol might defy an abler pen than mine to do it justice. It stands so finely too, high, and alone. The magnificent western facade is approached from the city by terraces and steps of bolder proportions than I ever before saw.
At Wells it would seem that both classes of workmen were employed, some of the statues being short and some extremely tall. They were executed, evidently, at different periods, the façade being gradually decorated, sometimes in groups of several statues, and sometimes in simple pairs.
The house in which Pelle and his wife lived the "Palace," the inhabitants of the street called it was an old, tumble-down, three- storied building with a mansard roof. Up the middle of the facade ran the remains of some fluted pilasters through the two upper stories, making a handsome frame to the small windows.
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